[ale] Asus P4P800-VM Woes

[Christopher Fowler]

I finally got my Asus P4P800-VM working.  I had to update the BIOS and
I'm not sure why.

Here is the story.

Customer had a failing system so they sent it to use for repair.  UPS
trashed it so we sold them a new system.  When we opened up trashed
system the CPU had been knocked out of the socket and pins bent.  Lost
cause.  Later we decided to resurrect the machine.  It had a 2.4GHZ
Celeron and We replaced it with a 2.4Ghz Celeron.  New fan and new hard
drives.  I decide to install FC8 on machine.  All works well til first
boot and  it hangs at "starting udev" for about 10 minutes.  It then
continues but takes 15 minutes to get to login.  It is as if I'm on a
386 16mHz.  I try FC7.  Same thing.  FC6 Same thing.  I decide that as a
last ditch I would upgrade the 1012 Bios -> 1018.  I do each revision
until I get to last revision and FC6 works great.  I go back and install
FC8 and it is still running at full speed now.

One thing I did notice on FC8 before the BIOS upgrade was that the
kernel kept complaining about CPU temp and throttled the speed.  No
messages after upgrade.  What I would like to figure out is why the BIOS
upgrade was needed.  Was the new Celeron D not compatible?  Were the
drivers in the new kernel trying to use non-existent features that was
causing the slow behavior?

Chris