Hello, First of all, greetings to all of you ! My name is Stephane Junique, I am new on this list. I have been a Mandrake user for a few years and a Linux user since 95. I hope I'll get everything right from the first post :-)
I am looking for someone with a Linux system running on a MSI K7D Master-L motherboard (the bi-processor mobo for the Athlon from MSI). It seems that linux has trouble handling this beast, probably (from what I have found so far) with the AMD 768 south-bridge. My system consists of the MSI motherboard, one Athlon 2400MP, one memory module (512MB Apacer, reg ECC), a GeForce4MX graphics card, a Chieftec 420W powersupply, a HDD and a DVD drive. I can't seem to install Linux on this system. I tried Mandrake 9.1, 8.2, as well as several RedHat distributions. Most of the time, the installation stops with "I/O error, impossible to read blablabla.rpm" (or some similar message) and sometimes it just crashes. It usually takes between 5 and 15 minutes. I tested the memory modules with memtest86, it looked OK. I switched the memory module (I have 2 identical + a nonECC/nonreg one), the processor (I have 2 spare Athlom 2000XP), the power supply, the HDD and the DVD. Most of these parts are known to work on another motherboard. Finally, I got the motherboard replaced. Still the same problem. While browsing this list, I found a thread with pointers to programs to test the hardware. Since I can't install an OS on the HDD, I downloaded Knoppix (a Linux distro running from the CD) and used it to test some more. I ran some burnCPU utilities: burnK7 for a couple of hours, then burnMMX for a couple of hours. No crash and no error message from the programs. I then started to copy the CD to the harddrive and the system hanged... I went to the BIOS, turned off IDE DMA, switched PIO to 1, but it got no better. I tried to use a PCI IDE adapter (Promise) instead of the one on the motherboard, but no luck. And it's not a hardware problem, no such problems under Windows... Irritating, isn't it ? By the way, the motherboard is described as "Tested hardware" for both MDK 8.2 and 9.1 in the HW database. Any ideas what is going on ? Best Regards, Stephane -- Stephane Junique <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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