FC3 an a new system

[ne...]

On Mon, 20 Dec 2004 10:13:59 -0600, apjaworski at mmm.com
<apjaworski at mmm.com> wrote:
> 
> Hello there,
> 
> I am about to get a new system and I have a couple of simple questions
> about hardware compatibility.
> 
> 1.  I am thinking about getting an ASUS K8N board with Athlon 64 processor.
> Do I have to install FC3 x86_64 or can I install 32bit FC3.  If I can do
> both, which one is better, especially if I want to compile and run some
> 32bit applications.
As Jonathan said, you can do both. I have a Gigabyte that had FC3 64bit and I
just installed the 32bit FC3. This machine also has FreeBSD 5.3 AMD64. 

> 2.  I am thinking about getting just two SATA HDs.  The motherboard has
> Sil3114 controller.  Will FC3 installer recognize the disks and let me
> install the system?
I have 3 SATA drives. All are recognized. I have 2 on sata_nv and 1 on
sata_sil.

> 3.  Will I be able to use the Realtek ALC850 audio controller or should I
> buy a separate sound card (I was thinking about getting an Audigy card).
I haven't tested sound with 32bit FC3 but it does work with 64 bit FC3 and
FreeBSD 5.3. Sound is not my thing so I didn't get another sound card.

> 4. Similar things with the built-in gigabit LAN.  I am not even sure what
> that is - it says "Chipset built-in Gigabit MAC with external Marvell PHY
> supporting 10/100/1000 BASE-T Ethernet" in the specs.
ATM, I use the Marvel gigabit nic. I have not tried the other one as yet.
I do know that FC3 64bit set both of them up. I see sk98lin loaded and
used and forcedeth loaded.

> Any thoughts and other recommendations are welcome.
Problems. Mine were minor. I had to manually install grub using
grub-install. The grub.conf files were fine. On FC3 64bit, I had
problems on firstboot. I had to switch to command line which
I prefer. I could only install FC3 32bit by passing noprobe to the
boot command line. I currently use this in grub.conf. When I switch
from Linux to FreeBSD, I have to power off so that the nic would
come up. FC3 32bit was installed last night.  I think I might add another
gig of ram and another 200GB SATA drive, then reinstall proper.
Otherwise everything is peachy.

N.Emile...
-- 
Registered Linux User # 125653 (http://counter.li.org)
Certified: 75% bastard, 42% of which is tard. 
http://www.thespark.com/bastardtest