How to: Arima AMD Opteron Quad Core Socket F 3000 series

[shoota]

yep it was you, i remember you saying that now. btw that was a scary quick response lol

[karbonkid]

yep it was you, i remember you saying that now. btw that was a scary quick response lol

lol i keep checking the giveaway thread from user cp

[shoota]

i know i can't stop either! and now my friends' dog just died so i have to leave the house

[retro77]

Any updates, Rise?

[terramir]

Crunching only. But from the looks of things, I need to keep an eye on it as I've had issues with BOINC doing weird things before. I followed the linux how-to thread and found out after the fact that it had directions to using an old pre-release version of BOINC, so I'm blaming it on that version. But every time I try to upgrade it, BOINC manager cannot connect to the local host and sits there. Heck even with the one that is working, if I make a shortcut on the desktop to it, it won't work. It is like it loads an entirely different instance of the manager totally separate from everything else, it is really weird.

Meh. Linux > Me.

i hear ya man, i have a love/hate relationship with linux too. Luckily i haven't had those problems. Maybe you should just start over and install everything fresh

Heh I'm afraid if I do I won't get it working at all

Heck I had a Hate/hate relationship with linux until I started using a proprietary shell based on darwin hehe, in my computers. then I just had to get into terminal in order to get things to work properly LOL. I'm thinking about asking a friend of mine to look at the firmware for this board, because he has done some amazing work modding bios'es for the os I just referenced. he may be able to fix the acpi bugs that are present in the firmware. Can someone tell me where the links to the newest firmware versions are.
BTW on another note, does anyone know what the pinout is on the two power plugs, and how do you guys get regular power supplies to work with it, I mean do you short the green pin to ground?
Also does this board take ddr2 ecc ram? and what speed? I'm gonna go on ebay and buy a bunch of small cheap sticks, how good is the memory handling with this setup, do I have to have at least 4 sticks present with 4 processors?
terramir

[karbonkid]

Darwin guru for firmware modding = v. good idea, seeing as Mac is the main place where EFI is used...

See if you can get him to upgrade the AGESA code too

[terramir]

Darwin guru for firmware modding = v. good idea, seeing as Mac is the main place where EFI is used...

See if you can get him to upgrade the AGESA code too

AGESA code what is that ?
give me some info I'll pass it along.
terramir

[retro77]

My two Arima's had computation errors on all WUs. I tried to get more WU but I got this:

Tue 14 Dec 2010 03:43:08 PM PST World Community Grid Message from server: No work sent
Tue 14 Dec 2010 03:43:08 PM PST World Community Grid Message from server: No work is available for Help Conquer Cancer
Tue 14 Dec 2010 03:43:08 PM PST World Community Grid Message from server: (reached daily quota of 16 results)

I hope they get new WU soon...

[D_A]

Unless you've found and corrected the problem your quota will keep dropping till you're only getting one unit a day.

What OS/version are you using? 64 or 32bit?

[terramir]

I want to power two of these boards in one case, at first one will run 3x 8347he and one will run one 8437he then I will move that over when I have decided which processor I will go with for the second set. I can get the 8350's for 58 bucks, and the 8354's for 65 bucks each new from pricewatch, however I'll probably go with what I can afford from eBay and the completion costs later on.
all 8 cpu's will be water-cooled through one modified heater-core I got ready as well as maybe a cheap rad or two. Yes I know ghetto, but heck and a aqua-extreme z50 pump I have laying around, now the question is how much power will I need to power the following:
4 8347 he + one arima and one HD and one cheapo video card maybe an x800 +
One arima + 4 cpu's which could be the 8354's or 8360's if I can find some cheap, plus one usb flash drive
+ the aquaextreme z50 and four cheap 140 mm fans
What power supply will do this job or will I need two PSU's?
terramir

[retro77]

Unless you've found and corrected the problem your quota will keep dropping till you're only getting one unit a day.

What OS/version are you using? 64 or 32bit?

Ubuntu Server 10.10 64-bit. It was weird that they both did the same thing on the same day. Odd...

[D_A]

So they WERE working fine? You haven't changed project selection or anything?

[retro77]

Ya, they were crunching away. I came home from work for a second and they had Computation Error on about 386 WUs...I told them to update then left them alone. I came home just now and they are both crunching away. One was only crunching 9 WUs at a time, I updated it again to upload the ones that it completed this afternoon and it pulled down more. Weird anomaly. Just thought I'd post here just in case others had seen the same thing.

[D_A]

Make sure you take note of what units error'd out in case it happens again. It might help diagnose the issue.

[terramir]

Make sure you take note of what units error'd out in case it happens again. It might help diagnose the issue.

ehhh some work units are just faulty as well we had a batch about 2 months ago that didn't work out on boinc the aids one I think it was.

Anyway can someone look at my post about the power requirements I need to know what to get
terramir

[retro77]

Make sure you take note of what units error'd out in case it happens again. It might help diagnose the issue.

The machines were only crunching HCC. I've switched them over to a different project.

[AmiJIm]

terramir,
you can find the latest bios and the all vga compatible bios here and here.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=PS3909SD latest bios nvidia 9800 , ati 4850 confirmed working.
http://megaupload.com/?d=e9ucdqjo compatible with all pci-e and pci vgas
Anyone has a non working board for sale?

[karbonkid]

AGESA code what is that ?
give me some info I'll pass it along.
terramir

AGESA is a special block of code, additional to CPU microcode, that is used to initialize post-Barcelona CPUs. If your guy can figure out a way to insert a newer version of AGESA, then I can provide one that is compatible with Shanghai. Myself and some much more clever people over at Rebel's Haven Forums have thus far failed trying to update the AGESA in any BIOS, however...

[Sparky]

Every time I see a reply to this thread I keep hoping to see a modded bios and a how-to for flashing it to fully support ACPI

[terramir]

AGESA is a special block of code, additional to CPU microcode, that is used to initialize post-Barcelona CPUs. If your guy can figure out a way to insert a newer version of AGESA, then I can provide one that is compatible with Shanghai. Myself and some much more clever people over at Rebel's Haven Forums have thus far failed trying to update the AGESA in any BIOS, however...

I looked at what you said and I was thinking how would that work since in order to support that you would need some power thing to go on as well, if I remember correctly, unless the chipset used could support it, i.e. the nvidia mcp 55 supports shanghai on other boards (btw that's where you should be looking) in some fashion I find it unlikely to be possible.
But maybe just maybe this bios can be modded to be acpi compliant maybe even in such a clean way that windows 2008 will work as well as a darwin based , that is with a patched kernel though.
Can one of you guys in ubuntu extract the dsdt.dst(decompiled) or the dsdt.aml (machine code) from this board, maybe it will give me and my friends some hints what is wrong with the acpi table in the bios. I don't have my boards yet and the procs I won in the giveaway are probably two weeks to a month off since there coming from japan, So can you guys extract the DSDT.aml and I'll look though it and with a little help from my friends maybe we can find the bugs that are causing the (BSOD).
terramir

[karbonkid]

I looked at what you said and I was thinking how would that work since in order to support that you would need some power thing to go on as well, if I remember correctly, unless the chipset used could support it, i.e. the nvidia mcp 55 supports shanghai on other boards (btw that's where you should be looking) in some fashion I find it unlikely to be possible.

DDPM (split power planes) is required for Istanbul, but not Shanghai. The only limiting factor is microcode and AGESA, and AGESA is a binary blob provided by AMD that does not vary between boards (for the same version).. It does all the intialization magic including, I guess, therefore, detecting and enabling DDPM support if it is there. Nothing to do with 'chipset' - remember mcp55 is little more than a southbridge.

We can extract AGESA from one board's BIOS and insert it into another, but so far we have been unsuccessful in getting the new BIOS to go with the change. Forgive me for my cloudiness as it has been at least a year since I was working on this.

You may also want to speak to the Coreboot guys - they wrote, from scratch, their own initialization code for quad-cores - I assume because AGESA didn't meet their license criteria.

I am unsure how much things vary between EFI and BIOS but donating a board to Coreboot developers to get them to add support may be a way to get ACPI support, if hacking the current BIOS is unsuccessful.

[retro77]

I looked at what you said and I was thinking how would that work since in order to support that you would need some power thing to go on as well, if I remember correctly, unless the chipset used could support it, i.e. the nvidia mcp 55 supports shanghai on other boards (btw that's where you should be looking) in some fashion I find it unlikely to be possible.
But maybe just maybe this bios can be modded to be acpi compliant maybe even in such a clean way that windows 2008 will work as well as a darwin based , that is with a patched kernel though.
Can one of you guys in ubuntu extract the dsdt.dst(decompiled) or the dsdt.aml (machine code) from this board, maybe it will give me and my friends some hints what is wrong with the acpi table in the bios. I don't have my boards yet and the procs I won in the giveaway are probably two weeks to a month off since there coming from japan, So can you guys extract the DSDT.aml and I'll look though it and with a little help from my friends maybe we can find the bugs that are causing the (BSOD).
terramir

Do you have instructions on how to do this?

[terramir]

Do you have instructions on how to do this?

I can't ask for the credit my self so I'm posting a link a single page tells ya what to do:
http://acpi.sourceforge.net/dsdt/index.php
This will show you how to get the dsdt.aml and well the tool to convert it to a people readable source.
If there are any problems because this is an efi system I'll have tio do some further reading
terramir

[retro77]

Ok so here is what you need to do:

sudo cat /proc/acpi/dsdt > dsdt.aml
sudo apt-get install iasl
iasl -d dsdt.aml > dsdt.asl

PM me your email address and I'll try to send this dsdt..asl to you from Ubuntu...

[Jacka]

Could everybody please post the graphics cards they've been able to boot their systems with please?

Thank you.