Skulltrail D5400XS motherboard nightmare!

[MichaelFreedman]

Howdy,

I have been trying in vain to get a system up and running with the "top of the line" Intel motherboard and have been having nothing but troubles. I'm hoping someone here may have some insight.

The system is in a Supermicro rack mount chassis with a 900W power supply.
Dual 3.2GHZ Quad core processors
16GB FB-Dimm 800MHz memory
Areca 1680ix Disk Controller PCI-E x8
NVidia Quadro FX 3700 video
Various other PCI/PCI-E cards.
OpenSUSE 10.3 32 and 64bit - OpenSUSE 11.0 64bit
Bios revision 1140 (the latest)

I am building this system to control a radar system and what I am finding is that with one exception, I am having problems with every board I put in the system.

The only PCI card that I see no problems with is an Intel based Gigabit Ethernet card. The Nvidia card I have in there now seems to be pretty stable, but the Quadro FX 3450 that I had in there was a little flaky on shutdown.

My Areca card causes system hangs, and when any other PCI card is plugged in, hangs with an error described by Areca as an unrouted interrupt on bootup.

The other card I have been desperatly tying to get working is a Pentek Digital Reciever card. This card works in both my Dell 490 and Dell 690 with no problems. In the Intel system, the IRQ never gets routed. If I look in the PCI configuration space, the interrupt line is 0xFF. As is usual, Intel tech support doesn't have a clue.

I have also tried a Symmetricom True Time GPS card, and an IOTech analog I/O card as well. They both come up again without the interrupt routed.

I have tried every combination of kernel boot option including disabling ACPI and APIC. My problem is that this is the only board with the slot configuration that I need. Is this par for the course for an Intel board?

Thanks in advance for any input.

Michael Freedman

 

[Mr Fox]

Originally posted by: MichaelFreedman
Howdy,

I have been trying in vain to get a system up and running with the "top of the line" Intel motherboard and have been having nothing but troubles. I'm hoping someone here may have some insight.

The system is in a Supermicro rack mount chassis with a 900W power supply.
Dual 3.2GHZ Quad core processors
16GB FB-Dimm 800MHz memory
Areca 1680ix Disk Controller PCI-E x8
NVidia Quadro FX 3700 video
Various other PCI/PCI-E cards.
OpenSUSE 10.3 32 and 64bit - OpenSUSE 11.0 64bit
Bios revision 1140 (the latest)

I am building this system to control a radar system and what I am finding is that with one exception, I am having problems with every board I put in the system.

The only PCI card that I see no problems with is an Intel based Gigabit Ethernet card. The Nvidia card I have in there now seems to be pretty stable, but the Quadro FX 3450 that I had in there was a little flaky on shutdown.

My Areca card causes system hangs, and when any other PCI card is plugged in, hangs with an error described by Areca as an unrouted interrupt on bootup.

The other card I have been desperatly tying to get working is a Pentek Digital Reciever card. This card works in both my Dell 490 and Dell 690 with no problems. In the Intel system, the IRQ never gets routed. If I look in the PCI configuration space, the interrupt line is 0xFF. As is usual, Intel tech support doesn't have a clue.

I have also tried a Symmetricom True Time GPS card, and an IOTech analog I/O card as well. They both come up again without the interrupt routed.

I have tried every combination of kernel boot option including disabling ACPI and APIC. My problem is that this is the only board with the slot configuration that I need. Is this par for the course for an Intel board?

Thanks in advance for any input.

Michael Freedman

You are using a Oddball Hybrid Enthusiast Gaming Board to Preform Enterprise Style Functions....

The Issues that you are having are probably from the NVIDIA part of that Cluster Fuck of A MOBO...

Sorry to be so Blunt...Return that POS and Get a Real Enterprize MOBO like a TYAN, or a ASUS, and research it to assure that it will play with those flavors of Linux.

 

[MichaelFreedman]

I hear what you are saying. Here' s my problem though, I need to move TONS of data. I use the GPU for realtime signal processing, and will be adding an NVIDIA cuda card next. I need the PCI-E X16 slots for high bandwidth data aquisition cards, and a high bandwith disk subsystem for data recording. Will be recording in excess of 1GB/Sec. This was the only board that "on paper" met the requirements. I just ordered an ASUS Z7S WS board. Any comments on that one. I lose one slot that I was counting on. The Disk controller can run on the x8 slot, but I really needed the other X16 slot. Any ideas.

 

[mooseracing]

Originally posted by: Mr Fox

Sorry to be so Blunt...Return that POS and Get a Real Enterprize MOBO like a TYAN, or a ASUS, and research it to assure that it will play with those flavors of Linux.

ASUS is not enterprise, Tyan or Supermicro are th eonly way to go.

Oh and check out the skulltrail thread on 2cpu.com. Some good info there.

 

[Mr Fox]

Originally posted by: MichaelFreedman
I hear what you are saying. Here' s my problem though, I need to move TONS of data. I use the GPU for realtime signal processing, and will be adding an NVIDIA cuda card next. I need the PCI-E X16 slots for high bandwidth data aquisition cards, and a high bandwith disk subsystem for data recording. Will be recording in excess of 1GB/Sec. This was the only board that "on paper" met the requirements. I just ordered an ASUS Z7S WS board. Any comments on that one. I lose one slot that I was counting on. The Disk controller can run on the x8 slot, but I really needed the other X16 slot. Any ideas.

That MOBO is a Much Better Choice !! I, have two of those Mobo's running my DCC CMM/CAD Stations with no real issues on '03 Server.

Originally posted by: mooseracing

Originally posted by: Mr Fox

Sorry to be so Blunt...Return that POS and Get a Real Enterprize MOBO like a TYAN, or a ASUS, and research it to assure that it will play with those flavors of Linux.

ASUS is not enterprise, Tyan or Supermicro are th eonly way to go.

Oh and check out the skulltrail thread on 2cpu.com. Some good info there.

Two years ago, that would have been more correct !

You apparently have not seen a few of their Newer CAD/WS Solutions.....

 

[NXIL]

Dear Dr. F, (I assume you are an astrophysics guy? Government-military radar guys would have a custom motherboard built for eight zillion dollars.....)

Here are some boards that have 4 x 16X PCIe slots:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...yCodeValue=736%3A19652

Here is a Tyan board with 4 physical PCIx16 slots, but, lower signal as you can see:

http://www.tyan.com/product_board_detail.aspx?pid=433

Supermicro, 3 PCIx8, one PCIx4 in a PCIx8 slot:

http://www.supermicro.com/prod...on1333/5400/X7DWN+.cfm

4 PCIx8:

http://www.supermicro.com/prod...eon1333/5400/X7DWE.cfm

5 PCIx8:

http://www.supermicro.com/prod...n1333/5000P/X7DBi+.cfm

GL, HTH

NXIL

Edit: looks like they all have at least one and often two GB lan ports; Linux/Solaris/Unix should support these boards really well, more so than the skulltrail I would think.....

 

[toadeater]

Originally posted by: MichaelFreedman
I have tried every combination of kernel boot option including disabling ACPI and APIC. My problem is that this is the only board with the slot configuration that I need. Is this par for the course for an Intel board?

Have you checked what IRQs these cards are using or trying to use? Can you set them manually? Try disabling motherboard components you're not using, like parallel ports, disk controllers, etc.

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: MichaelFreedman
OpenSUSE 10.3 32 and 64bit - OpenSUSE 11.0 64bit

I have tried every combination of kernel boot option including disabling ACPI and APIC. My problem is that this is the only board with the slot configuration that I need. Is this par for the course for an Intel board?

Intel only supports Windows on D5400XS. Unfortunately, the same appears to be true for ASUS Z7S WS.

In addition to the SuperMicro models mentioned above, these are approved for at least one major enterprise/server Linux distro:

Tyan Tempest i5400XT (S5396)

Tyan Tempest i5400PL (S5393)

ASUS DSEB-DG or -DG/SAS