ABIT BP6 Motherboard explicitly supports FreeBSD

Wes Peters writes (via DaemonNews): " I bought an ABIT BP6 dual Celeron (socket 370) motherboard today, to work SMP projects with FreeBSD. While poking through the user manual, I was pleasantly surprised to find the following in section 1-5.

Dual Processor Knowledge You Should Know

For best performance, you should use an OS (Operating System) that supports multi-processors. The following OSes can support multi-processor functions: Microsoft Windows(R) NT (3.5x, 4.x and 5.x), SCO Unix, FreeBSD 3.0 or later, Linux, etc.

(emphasis added) This is the first specific mention of BSD I've seen in a PC hardware manual. This board comes strongly recommended."

Comments

Re:thinking about a bp6, 366->550@100mhz?

[zootz]

I have a bp6 with dual 366's at 550 and I've very happy as well (oh yes, JC above said six but actually there are 8 slots for devices, 2 ata66 ide ports and 2 regular ide ports). But, in regards to your questions, first check out: bp6.hypermart.net b4 making a decision...lots of useful nfo there. And second, the bp6 has enough settings to work with any card...and if the system is having trouble, then it is most likely the card. You shouldn't be worried about not running at a common FSB (ie, something other than 66 or 100) unless you are running at 75 or 83 MHz FSB, in which case you are running your agp and pci buses out of spec. The bp6 allows you to select from 92 up to whatever in increments of 1 MHz so it is great for tweaking the last bit of speed out of your system. And definitely go with 366's...about 75% or more go to 550 without a voltage bump cause the multiplier is 5.5. And they're only ~$50! So get a bp6...I guarantee you won't be disappointed!

Abit BP6 Lock-ups

[latigid]

I have a bp6 with two 366 clocked to 550, and had lots of lockup problems, It seemed that the second pci slot (down from the AGP) was alomost unuasble. If I put one of my network cards in there I would get 19000 mil second access times move to another slot and I would get 10 mil sec. also my adaptec 2940 would get alot of scsi errors in this same slot. after putting one card in at a time and testing.. I have everything working great under linux. AGP- Viper V770 pci 1- adaptec 2940uw pci 2-Hauppauge wintv card ( this was the problem slot) pci 3-Intel etherexpress pro 10/100 pci 4-Intel etherexpress pro 10/100 pci/isa shared 5-awe 64 sound card isa 6-usr v90 modem and the temp of the processors is around 113 F It really helped to use thermal paste on the heat sinks!! Check out www.bp6.com there message board really helps

ftp.cdrom.com

[BacOs]

>ftp.cdrom.com is running off of a dual Xeon running FreeBSD.

ftp.cdrom.com is a uni-processor Xeon running FreeBSD - see ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/archive-info/wca rchive.txt

Re:ABIT BP6, SMP, and OS

[Guy Harris]

Ever talk to Larry McVoy (chief architect behind SunOS 4

Nope. SunOS 4.0 shipped before Larry joined Sun (Larry joined either just before I left, or after I left); I'm not sure there's any one person who could be called a "chief architect behind SunOS 4" - if you consider the new VM system to have been the biggest change in SunOS 4.0, then the main people involved in the design and implementation of it were Bill Shannon, Rob Gingell, and Joe Moran, as I remember.

Larry did stuff for SunOS 4.1[.x], such as the pseudo-extent stuff in the 4.1[.x] file system, and was, I think, the person one might consider the architect of the SPARCcluster-1 system.

i love my bp6

[j1mmy]

I built a dual celeron 500 with it last summer and it's a damn nice machine. I've been wary about running BSD on it, however, because I've always heard that BSD's SMP support was poor. Anybody know how it stands today?

Re:i love my bp6

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you smoking crack? The other BSDs may not have SMP or have poor versions of it, but FreeBSD's SMP is currently superior to Linux's.

Re:i love my bp6

[Zach Garner]

This was posted on mailing.freebsd.chat and crossposted to a number of other newsgroups.
"Ours" in this case refers to FreeBSD and "Theirs" refers to Linux (note the date):
--------------
On Thu, 17 Feb 2000, Brad Knowles wrote:
> See some of Matt Dillon's comments regarding Linux. Our memory
>management scheme beats the crap out of theirs, although their SMP is
>ahead of ours.
--------------

There are a number of other posts similar to that (the majority being in freebsd related newsgroups). Also from my (usually bad) memory, FreeBSD only supports 2 CPU's while linux supports 4 (although, i think, more are supposedly possible on both). I'm also pretty sure that Linux has supported SMP longer than FreeBSD (which only had it starting with 3.0)

There was a link on some website i saw recently claiming that FreeBSD was ~20% faster with SMP. The link to the benchmark was broken, though.

Without benchmarks, i tend not to belive either one. Unless you are running a server or doing some serious rendering or cracking, it probably will not make THAT much of a difference.

And of course, i must mention 1) FreeBSD 4.0 is coming out soon, and SMP i would assume has been improved and 2) ftp.cdrom.com is running off of a dual Xeon running FreeBSD.

:wq

Re:i love my bp6

[mikfire]

Actually, FreeBSD has supported more than two CPUs for a while ( somewhere shortly after 3.0 was released according to my frequently-bad memory ).

The reason Linux's SMP code is better than FreeBSDs is that FreeBSD has this thing called the Giant Kernel Lock.

When running SMP, any process that needs to access the kernel employs the GKL, which prevents every other process from accessing any portion of the kernel.

Linux has no such problem. SMP in Linux is likely going to be better for a while - there are a lot of very nasty problems that need to be solved before FreeBSD can remove GKL.

If you really want to know more about this, search the archives for either GKL or Giant Kernel Lock in either the FreeBSD-Current or FreeBSD-SMP mailing lists.

Mik

Re:Nice, but

[esobofh]

I wouldn't exactly call them intel's prison bitch when they are going against intels wishes by creating a dual socket 370 mobo in the first place.. granted a k7 board would be nice from them..

----------------------------

Tekram also says that it supports FreeBSD

[mat]

ABit is not the only computer manufacturer to annonce explicitly the support of FreeBSD : when I bought my Tekram SCSI (DC390 or something like that) FreeBSD and Linux were listed in the list of suported OS in the box.
Will the logos BSD or Linux will replace yesterday's Novell logos on network cards ?

Re:Tekram also says that it supports FreeBSD

[blasphemi]

When I bought one of my NIC's it was a FreeBSD driver section on the drivers disk although it only contained a url to the driver... same was for linux.

It was a noname (I can't find any brand on the box) RealTek 8039 10/100 PCI nic.

But on the other hand the driver/card didn't work to good with FreeBSD, 100Mbit mode works just fine but on 10Mbit it gets problem with the buffer and I had to reset about every 24 hours (so I got myself a NE2000 NIC for my 10Mbit network and is still using the RealTek card on my 100Mbit).

Yeah, I know Realtek cards are crap but it was damn cheap ones, I paid $11 each half a year ago...

ABIT BP6, SMP, and OS

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a BP6 running FreeBSD on dual Celeron 366s. (Not overclocked, yet.) When building it, I attempted to install WinNT 4.0 and Solaris 7.

WinNT installed ok, but kept rejecting my 3Com 905B network card. Rather than beat my head on a wall, I moved on.

Solaris would cough up a page fault on one of the processors. My well matched, pre-tested celerons were meant to run TOGETHER, so Solaris was shelved.

FreeBSD installed cleanly the first time. A kernel rebuild later and It Just Works.

The only thing lacking will be fixed when I upgrade to FreeBSD 4: ATA/66 support was nonexitant when I built the box. FBSD4 has a new and improved ATA driver that should make my life just a whole lot quicker.

Haven't tried Linux on it. No need to at this point.

Re:ABIT BP6, SMP, and OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Like so many people you seem to fail to understand what performance means.

A better performance means: Doing whatever you are supposed to do better.

Somehow people mix this up with being faster. Being faster can also be better performance, but it is most definitely not the same.

In case of playing motion video for example better performance usually means stricter timing and better picture quality. Pure speed will most likely just cause your video stream to become unviewable.

The same holds true for performance of computer systems. If you need a computer to be faster, then linux may give better performance on such an smp box. If you however want your machine to be better capable of working while under heavy stress, FreeBSD will perform a lot better.

Performance is nothing in itself, you first have to define WHAT has to be performed before you can measure any performance.

Re:ABIT BP6, SMP, and OS

[Jesus Christ]

Solaris would cough up a page fault on one of the processors.

I have installed Solaris 7 on my BP6 box numerous times with no trouble. I've done it with the processors running at rated speed (400MHz), and overclocked (6x83 = 500MHz).

My well matched, pre-tested celerons were meant to run TOGETHER, so Solaris was shelved.

I guess I've been lucky, because my Celerons are retail, off-the-shelf from Buy.com. ;-)

My one beef, which applies to Solaris, BSD, and Linux, is that they will neither detect, nor install to, anything on the UltraATA/66 bus. Maybe I just wasn't trying hard enough.

I am the Lord.

abit bp6 is wonderful

[Jesus Christ]

I have been running FreeBSD on a BP6 a while now, and I think it's great. Even if you aren't interested in SMP, it's a great Celeron mainboard.

Good things about the BP6:

• Ultra ATA/66 support. In addition to the two "regular" IDEs. That means you can hook up six IDE devices instead of four.
• One AGP slot, five dedicated PCI slots, and two dedicated ISA slots.
• An **excellent** BIOS, complete with independant CPU temperature monitoring. The Celeron is very overclockable, and the BP6 BIOS is wonderful for this. You get a lot of MHz options, not just 66 and 100. I'm currently using Celeron 400s, both O/C to 500MHz at 6x83MHz. Very sweet.
• 768MB max RAM!!

I've been soooooooooo happy with this system.

Yes, it is true that the FreeBSD SMP kernel isn't as "fast" as Linux's. However, IMHO it is more stable. And even if it weren't, I'd rather run it with one processor than switch to Linux. But that's just my deal.

One downside: cooling. If you are planning on building a system with this board, get a full tower. Two O/C Celerons will get rather hot, and if you toss in a 7200rpm HDD or two, you will be cooking. You'll need the extra space in the full tower just for cooling supples. Run over to CoolerGuys and stock up now. Here is my personal experience cooling with this mainboard:

• Those Celerons will get hot even running at rated speed. The stock Intel fan/heatsink combo is not suffient for an SMP system. I recommend the Alpha NovaTech PAL6035. A less expensive option is the Global Win VFP32
• 7200rpm HDDs need cooling. Try a Baycooler or an Istorm.
• Also nice are the slot coolers. I use the Vantec. PC Power & Cooling makes a funky looking one which I can't recommend.
• If you aren't careful or have a small case, the IDE cables can block the CPU1 fan. This will cause a 1 - 4 degree farenheit rise in that CPUs temperature.

Note: I am not affialiated with Cooler Guys, but I buy all of my crap from them, so those were the links I had handy.

I have gotten the CPUs up past 112F without lockups in this mainboard, but I'd recommend keeping things below 95. This isn't easy but your HDDs will last longer if you keep things cool.

Enough ranting for now. I just love that BP6!!

I am the Lord.

Re:Nice, but

[ZiGGyKAoS]

Agreed!

balls of fire (courtesy of quantum)

[Jesus Christ]

I got a good deal on a couple of 13.6GB Quantum Fireballs a while back, so I've been using those. Haven't had any performance problems, but they do seem do get warm. Well, they're called Fireballs, so should I be surprised?

Whenever I get off my ass and switch to SCSI, I'm sure I'll have a good chuckle at them.

I'd appreciate any other Quantum Fireball info. I don't know if the company even makes decent hardware. When I bought them, I was looking at it this way: they're the right size, the right price, they're ATA/66, and the company isn't a total unknown to me. Cash or charge? ;-) So it's possible that I am missing out on performance, and I just don't know it yet.

I am the Lord.