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

[retro77]

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

Thank you.

PCIe ATI x550
I got it from eBay with passive cooling for lower noise and power consumption...

[shoota]

ati rage xl pci
ati x800 pci-e
nvidia tnt pci

[Jacka]

Normal x800 or one of the many variants?

[shoota]

plain jane vanilla x800 256mb

[terramir]

Okies figured out two problems why peeps cannot load windows 2008 server!
#1 no 64 bit math support in the dsdt (acpi) table
#2 the highest windows OS supported in this bios is windows 2000.1 (I think that is the server version (32 bit albeit)
When they made this EFI they totally screwed-up and just pasted and scratched together what they could find, I suspect sparky you'll be able to load windows 2k server on this thing, however you may run into some problems unless you can find and load windows 2000 nvidia sata drivers (if there is an option to set it to ide in the bios you may be successful without having to load drivers otherwise you'll have to find some generic nForce drivers.
Dun even bother trying with raid those drivers are notoriously buggy for win 2k/xp I crashed a recent system based on an ion platform after only a month of usage and gave up and went to darwin on the atom 330 board.
Someone please try to load win 2k server and try ide mode first on sata before angering yourself with f6 and buggy nforce ahci or sata drivers.
this is based on the 10 version of the bios I just started analysing the dsdt.dsl
give updates as I see them workable
terramir
terramir

[retro77]

Nice work Terramir.

[Sparky]

Well I thought about trying 2000, except I don't have a copy of 2000 server, and the lack of 64 bit would be Did things change that much between 2000 and 2003?

But, looks like good detective work, and possibly some progress towards finding a way to fix it to work with newer versions

[Jacka]

I can't find any reference to Server 2000 on MSDN software center.

[terramir]

Well I thought about trying 2000, except I don't have a copy of 2000 server, and the lack of 64 bit would be Did things change that much between 2000 and 2003?

But, looks like good detective work, and possibly some progress towards finding a way to fix it to work with newer versions

well ya if I can figure out how to patch the dsdt it be doable, BTW look fir windows 2000 4 in 1 on the internet and you'll find it

I can't find any reference to Server 2000 on MSDN software center.

It's abandoned now you can still find it on torrent sites as part of windows 2000 4in1 that contains windows 2000 server and advanced server, however I don't know if windows 2000 server supports efi however sp4 might, neither does windows millenium but it's listed in the dsdt, so that dsdt is a total cut and paste job, no wonder they went belly up :S
(you know these boards were made by arima usa LOL their phone is disconnected LOL)
terramir
BTW what methods did you try with newer versions? tried the usb flash drive install method? what settings did you have for the HD? did you even try ide mode? that might be the mode to work with on boards with these kind of problems.
terramir

[Jacka]

Windows 2000 Advanced Server Limited Edition and Datacenter Server Limited Edition support EFI 1.10, but they're designed for Itanium, so I'm not sure whether they will work on these boards.

[terramir]

ehh what memory sticks have you guys had success with, I just need to know which ones to pick as cheap as possible, memory speed should not have much effect on the ppd with these things, so I just need to know what I am looking for exactly
terramir

[Sparky]

I'm running some ECC registered DDR2-400 (PC2-3200). 4x2GB sticks. All in the CPU0 memory slots.

[Rise]

i know this will sound pretty nooooooobie of me but i want to make sure i got it right before i start the board up for the first time...

step 1: plug in power, video card, ram, and cpu0 -> check for post
step 2: add cpu1 -> check for post
step 3: add cpu2 -> check for post
step 4: add cpu3 -> check for post
step 5: add sata HDD, sata dvd, install linux
step 6: ???
step 7: profit!

look right?

[Sparky]

I just did it all at once: put in CPUs, RAM, attach water blocks and finish loop, attach power, hard drive, optical drive, power on, screw around with trying to get Windows to work, give up, install Linux and call it a day

[Rise]

you've got balls of steel man! maybe i'll try that and if it doesn't work i'll do 1 by 1.

[retro77]

Rise, make sure and pay close attention to the first post in this thread. I think the first boot is with the DVD drive on SATA20 [over by video card] and the hard drive can be plugged in anywhere else. Set your BIOS to boot from the DVD drive [it'll save time in waiting for PXE booting...] Then once the OS installs and wants to reboot, remove the power once it's in the BIOS POST portion and swap the hard drive over to SATA 20. DVD drive anywhere or disconnected. Go into the BIOS and make the hard drive your first bootable.

[terramir]

I just did it all at once: put in CPUs, RAM, attach water blocks and finish loop, attach power, hard drive, optical drive, power on, screw around with trying to get Windows to work, give up, install Linux and call it a day

I have one stupid question for all of you, I keep reading and the one thing I see about you guys trying to install windows is that you seem to have a problem with acpi dvd boot support, any of you try to install windows 2008 or windows 2003 server, with a usb drive? there is a way to make a usb flash drive bootable it works with windows vista and 7 and with some hack with xp, so why can't you do that with windows 2003, or 2008 server?
and after that if the board lacks proper usb booting support you could always clone the usb drive onto a small hard drive. I just thought of that when I was reading this thread again.

well I'll have my board on the 3rd of january and let's see if the odds and ends end up coming at about the same time.
I'm curious because I am thinking that would be soo cool if we could get windows or even darwin (yeah I'm a hack fan boi) to work on this board :p
terramir

[Rise]

Rise, make sure and pay close attention to the first post in this thread. I think the first boot is with the DVD drive on SATA20 [over by video card] and the hard drive can be plugged in anywhere else. Set your BIOS to boot from the DVD drive [it'll save time in waiting for PXE booting...] Then once the OS installs and wants to reboot, remove the power once it's in the BIOS POST portion and swap the hard drive over to SATA 20. DVD drive anywhere or disconnected. Go into the BIOS and make the hard drive your first bootable.

ty retro!

[retro77]

I have one stupid question for all of you, I keep reading and the one thing I see about you guys trying to install windows is that you seem to have a problem with acpi dvd boot support, any of you try to install windows 2008 or windows 2003 server, with a usb drive? there is a way to make a usb flash drive bootable it works with windows vista and 7 and with some hack with xp, so why can't you do that with windows 2003, or 2008 server?
and after that if the board lacks proper usb booting support you could always clone the usb drive onto a small hard drive. I just thought of that when I was reading this thread again.

well I'll have my board on the 3rd of january and let's see if the odds and ends end up coming at about the same time.
I'm curious because I am thinking that would be soo cool if we could get windows or even darwin (yeah I'm a hack fan boi) to work on this board :p
terramir

Never tried that. I never even tried installing Windows. I've heard that Linux is more efficient so I went with it. I have very little Linux knowledge and I was able to get up and running with the help of this AWESOME guide and a little Googling [because I went with Ubuntu Server 10.10 x64].

I come from a windows background [13 years IT exp!] but Linux has come a long way. I'm actually getting ready to move my work laptop over to Ubuntu exclusively.

[Sparky]

I've tried installing Windows from the optical and from a hard drive. Still no workie.

[terramir]

I've tried installing Windows from the optical and from a hard drive. Still no workie.

did you just dump the files on a hd? Cause that dun work, there is a procedure that needs to be followed, it's not like win98, where you could install from a hd folder.
how you try?
terramir

[D_A]

Sparky's no fool. He knows about making bootable media.

[terramir]

Sparky's no fool. He knows about making bootable media.

yeah but with 2008 it's tricky, you have to do it from a computer with vista or windows 7 and you need to transfer the nt60 block from the dvd, any other way to make it boot will kill the install, and you have to clean the partition table from with 7 or win vista command-line it will not work from win xp
trust me I've tried to work around it before it just won't work
I had to install win7 on my netbook in dual boot just so I could do this
terramir

[D_A]

Ugh. Easier to just install Linux.

[terramir]

Ugh. Easier to just install Linux.

yes I concur, however some people just like being in Gatesville, count me out of that though I'm a darwin, with a proprietary shell fan boi, but I can deal with ubuntu or others when need be,