Ranchu wrote:
Are the VIA Eden's supported? I'd like to build it into a nice mini ITX case.
No. There are fundamental limitations in the VIA processors that prevent Amithlon working on them.
What sort of CPU and how much RAM would I need? I've got some bits and pieces here including a GeForce 256 card - would that work OK?
I'd recommend an AthlonXP with 256Mb. The GF256 should work just fine.
- is CPU speed important and can you tell the difference between say a ~1ghz one or a 2ghz one in normal use?
Oh yes. Amithlon will run well on quite modest processors (I used to run it on an 800MHz Duron an it was fine) but it will happily use every clock cycle you can throw at it.
- 1gb RAM!!! Can you actually use all that?
I seem to recall Amithlon will fail to boot if you have 1GB of ram due to an address space problem. Anything less than that should be okay.
- I notice you have a 3com nic - does it work properly in Amithlon i thought only ne2000 ones work?
A 3Com NIC won't work. Amithlon only has native support for 10M/bit cards based on the RTL8029 chip. The OpenPCI package has a driver for the 100M/bit RTL8139D chip, which works with Amithlon.
- the nForce has a built in GF2 MX have you had any luck getting it to work in Amithlon?
The nForce is a bad choice if you want to run Amithlon as it isn't correctly supported. For example, the NVidia IDE controller will run in PIO0 mode, causing slow downs and sound problems.
- Does the IDE work in bus master mode or PIO 0 or whatever its called?
Depends on the motherboard's chipset. VIA is the way to go if you want fast disk I/O. Amithlon natively supports DMA on the KT133 and KT266 chipsets, and I've made available a beta kernel that supports the KT333 and KT400.
- Geforce 256 = original Gefore so it should work, right?
Yep. All GeForce cards are supported, although you'll need an updated kernel for the GF3 or better.
--
Gary "Dr Bombcrater" Colville
