Amithlon on Athlon 64

[Frags]

Having spent ten minutes wading through yahoo trying to join AmithlonOpen, I`ll try asking here instead )
I recently upgraded from a well-supported Amithlon system to an Asus a8v (kt-800pro) which I understood was compatible.  The problem is that now Amithlon won`t boot at all, not even as far as the ball - it`s just a black screen after loading the kernel.  I have tried both Bernie`s kernels and Bombcrater`s latest one as well to no avail.  I do have 2 gig of ram but I`ve tried mem=512m with no effect.  I am using a 9800xt graphics card.  As a last ditch before I give up, can anyone think of any bios settings or kernel options I might try?

thx

Will

[DrBombcrater]

Check for a 'memory hole' option in the BIOS and turn it off.

My kernels do work on the A8V, but I can't say exactly what BIOS settings are needed because my A8V died a couple of weeks ago.

[Frags]

Hmmm, I can`t see that option anywhere - maybe I`ll check for a bios update )  At least now I know it ought to work I can keep trying, so thanks for the response anyway.

Will

[Boot_WB]

When booting into Ubuntu on my Asus P4P800 I have to set the SATA to compatability mode, else the bootstrap errors out.  Quite a common error apparently.  Perhaps your amithlon problem could be similar? Try turining off SATA in the BIOS if you don't need it.

Regards



Rich

[Frags]

No luck there - I`m using pata drives and all the onboard hardware is disabled except usb.  Thanks for trying though )

[DrBombcrater]

Do you have another graphics card you could try?

Some Radeon cards have VESA related firmware problems that cause a lockup during boot. I'd forgotten about this until just now because almost all AGP Radeons now run with a dedicated hardware specific driver, not the generic VESA driver - but one of the few Radeons not supported by the dedicated driver is the 9800XT, so it'll be trying to run in VESA mode.

I can't really think of any other reason for it not working. Generally, only issues with memory or the graphics card will prevent Amithlon from booting at all.

[Frags]

Actually I`ve got just the thing - a Geforce 2.  I`ll have a bash later...

[JackHair]

I've had the exact same problem on my nForce 2/3/4 S939 systems. I solved it by making an Amithlon CD with the updated kernel, and adding "mem=512m crusoe" (without quotes) to the Amithlon startup script on the CD. (without the "crusoe" I'd only get a black screen)

My Amithlon CD startup is like this:
bzImage init=/linuxrc console_level=0 root=/dev/ram0 initrd=bigird.gz vga=769 ramdisk_size=12010 leavepages=10000 mem=512m crusoe

Don't ask me where I found the "crusoe" thingy, its a while ago, I don't remember

Good luck - Mike