OK, I got my amd64 hardware ... actually an Opteron 140 but am having some
problems.
Hardware:
After much hassle I got an ASUS SK8V MB. I first ordered a Gigabyte
K8NNXP-940 (looked pretty good and I had good luck with another Gigabyte MB
for dual athlons). This proved to an advertised and not really available
product so I switch the order to an ASUS SK8N. When I went to pick it up, I
was told that the RUMOR (NOTE, this is RUMOR, not FACT) that the SK8N had
been recalled and if I wanted, they had an SK8V I could have. Now, this
seemed better because the VIA chipset does not apparently have the acpi
problem so I got it.
The video adapter is an ATI 9100 and (as expected from other comments) the
onboard NIC did not work so I added a Linksys (tulip) NIC. The system has
1GB ECC Reg ram.
I installed i386 FC1 with no (well, see below) problems so this is hardware
that FC1 should handle.
Problem 1 (I do not really expect help here but who knows):
I have a Dell 2000FP (analog) monitor which is connected to a total of four
systems via a Belkin KVM switch. I have had zero problems with this setup
(runs 1600x1200 just fine) on my other systems (dual P-III, single P-III and
dual athlon).
When I poweron the Opteron the screen blinks a couple of times, some text
comes up for some IDE/raid controllers but then I get a blank screen with the
Dell saying it is in power-save mode. I finally dug out an old NEC XV17+ and
connected it directly. OK, it comes up and I was finally able the get into
BIOS Setup via the DEL key. I turned off some fancy ASUS/AMI graphic boot
stuff and otherwise configured the BIOS to be more friendly ... this resulted
in being able to at least bootup on the Dell but still unable to get into
BIOS Setup this way (or at least get it to display). On the Dell this BIOS
Setup image flashes but then the monitor goes into power-save mode. Once I
get to with the FC1 i386 cdrom prompt or (after install) the grub panel, the
display works fine.
OK, the conclusion I have come to is that the ASUS/AMI BIOS is using some
video adapter parameters which drives the Dell monitor nuts and forces it
into "off" mode.
I can't get this system to boot the floppy (it does boot the Maxtor harddrive
and the cdrom (DVD drive) but not the floppy) -- I am not sure the floppy
drive is even seen. This means that I cannot update the BIOS although there
is an update available.
I have not yet tried attaching the Dell monitor directly or to use the DVI
interface (both the 9100 adapter and the Dell monitor have a DVI interface in
addition to an analog interface). However, I do not expect this to work any
better since it seems (to me) to be video parameters that the ASUS/AMI BIOS
is using.
As I said, I don't expect help here but any would be appreciated.
Problem 2 (installing FC1 X86_64):
I downloaded all of the files from
fedora.linux.duke.edu, burned a cdrom using
images/boot.iso, and made the directory tree available via an NFS share. The
nfs shared fc1 directory tree has both i386 and x86_64 subtrees and I
successfully installed fc1-i386 off the i386 tree.
When I boot the x86_64 boot.iso cdrom it comes up. I enter the appropriate
system name and directory tree but then get "unable to mount" popup and am
unable to get any further. As I said, I used this same process to install
i386 FC1 and have checked the permission and they are OK.
Another strange thing is that I cannot switch to VT2 (ctl-alt-F2) although I
can switch to VT3 and VT4 ... maybe I am not far along enough for VT2 to
work.
Any help appreciated.
--
Gene