[ale] Trouble with new Pentium D

Chuck Huber chuck at cehuber.org
Tue Jan 9 12:08:37 EST 2007


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ale-request at ale.org wrote:
> Message: 7
> Date: Tue, 09 Jan 2007 10:54:17 -0500
> From: "Michael B. Trausch" <fd0man at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [ale] Trouble with new Pentium D
> To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts <ale at ale.org>
> Message-ID: <1168358057.4263.6.camel at pepper>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> 
> On Tue, 2007-01-09 at 09:44 -0500, Chuck Huber wrote:
> 
>> > 
>> > If it is a 64-bit machine, will I have to replace all the applications
>> > with 64-bit versions?  (vmware and winxp being the most problematic).
>> > 
>> > Any ideas would be helpful.
> 
> Well, at least on the two machines that I have that are 64-bit, you can
> run 32-bit operating systems on them.  Erica has a 64-bit Intel (you can
> tell these when you boot up by seeing if it says anything like "EM64T"
> on the screen; that's Intel's name for their 64-bit x86 CPU.  I have
> even run 16-bit software (FreeDOS, anyone) on an AMD64 without any
> issues.

That was my understanding as well.

> Her machine is a Pentium 4, but as I understand the Intel line of CPUs,
> your Pentium D should be just like the P4 she has, but if it is 64-bit,
> than with two 64-bit cores.

I believe with reasonable certainty that the Pentium D is a dual-core P4
with dual caches.

> Question:  Are you attempting to boot an SMP capable kernel?  I don't
> have really any experience with dual-core and multiple-CPU SMP systems
> (under Linux anyway) other than reading about them.  Is it possible that
> you have a uniprocessor kernel that is doing something strange when it
> sees two CPUs?

I suppose it's possible.  However when 9.2 was released multi-processor
systems were available, though dual-core CPU's weren't.  The rescue
system boot I tried was off of a Suse 9.2 CD.  I started a download of
10.1 and 10.2 CD's and DVD's this morning before I left for work.  They
should be done by the time I get home provided, of course, that
HellSouth can keep it together for a day.  I'll burn CD 1 from 10.1
tonight and try to boot the rescue system off of that.

As far as SMP vs non-SMP, the 10.1 rescue disk is smart enough to tell
the difference.  I installed 10.1 from the same version disk on a
Pentium D at work.  Runs x86 SMP kernels without a problem.  The only
thing I can figure right now is that the 2.4 kernel on the Suse 9.2 disk
is pretty dumb w.r.t. the Pentium D.  I'll try the 10.1 rescue disk
tonight and post the results.

With all that said, I don't know why the bios boot loader is not
recognizing the existing partitions (which is why I tried to boot the
rescue system in the first place).  It (the bios) is recognizing the
drives and their capacity, so comms between the controller and the
drives are good.  No cable problems there.

Do you think the new bios is mapping the drive differently than the old
bios, and thus the partition and boot information is not being read?

One of the things I'll try it to install the old MB/CPU and garner some
information about the drives.

Chris, if it's any consolation, the Pentium D I have running at work was
a smooth fresh install.  And man, is it fast!

Thanks for all the suggestions.  I'll keep the list posted on my progress,

    - Chuck

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