Text 3034, 168 rader
Skriven 2011-01-13 03:06:05 av Dariusz Piatkowski
Ärende: Re: AMD Phenom based hardware???
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p4b899d6518bba4f12ebb228e3a8cd478cb7f743dd5e09434ed02db063a57f067.newsdawg.com
comp.os.os2.setup.misc:484
From: "Dariusz Piatkowski" <dariusz@_NO-SPAM_mnsi.net>

On Mon, 31 May 2010 13:56:42 UTC, "Dariusz Piatkowski" 
<dariusz@_NO-SPAM_mnsi.net> wrote:

> Alright...the time has come to upgrade the ol' Betsy...LOL...looking at AMD 
> based hardware...did some reading around comparing the Athlon 2 X4 CPUs to
the 
> Phenom 2 X4 ones and for the most part it appears the L3 cache does make
enough 
> of a difference to get you some 'future' growing room.
> 
> So...the quest is on: what is the most compatible mb for the Phenom CPUs?
> 
> I had a look at the popular on-line hardware list...a few items show up...but

> very little info in terms of descriptions, etc...so I'm posing this question
to 
> the group, along with the proposed configuration of the system, having taken 
> into account things such as video drivers, NIC, etc.
> 
> My current system is an Asus A7N8X based, AMD Barton core, 2 Gig RAM, ATI
X800 
> AGP card using SNAP (no problems, happy with it), 3COM NIC.
> 
> The proposed new hardware is as follows:
> 
> CPU: AMD Phenom 2
> MB: ???
> VIDEO: ATI X850 PCI-e (already have this)
> HD: WD VelociRaptor (already have this), SATA2 drive
> NIC: 3COM Fast EtherLink XL (already have this, in case on-board NIC can't be

> worked)
> RAM: 4Gig (I understand less may be actually visible/available to OS2)
> PORTS: need SERIAL for UPS connectivity, then normal USB
> SLOTS: need at least a couple of PCI slots
> AUDIO: currently using UniAudio driver, would like to continue to use it
> 
> The software is as follows:
> 
> OS: Warp4 CP2, FP#6
> Kernel: 14.105, UNI
> 
> I believe I'm looking at a bunch of changes to the OS in order to support the

> multi-core CPUs like Phenom...no idea though specifically what...is it just
the 
> kernel that needs to be changed, or is there more?
> 
> Any hints/suggestions are always appreciated!

Well, you guys...a few months have passed since my original post, after 
gathering all the pre-requisite parts I finally got a chance to sit down and 
toss it all together.

The outcome: IT'S ALIVE, IT'S ALIVE...in the immortal words of our Young Dr. 
Frankenstein!

So here is the scoop, upon further research and feedback I got from you all in 
these posts I decided on the following:

1) motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P (rev. 1.0) 
(http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3096&dl=1#ov)

2) AMD Phenom II CPU, 555 Black Edition

3) ATI X850XT PE PCIe video adapter

4) Antec 1200 case, 650 EarthWatts PS, Corsair A70 CPU cooler, OCZ Reaper 
DDR3-1600 RAM

So these are the major components, now here is how far I've gotten with them.

The CPU itself has the default 2 cores enabled. I did follow the core
un-locking
instructions and successfully un-locked the remaining 2 cores, thus giving me a

total of 4 cores...fun...but so what you say?

Well, on my otherwise 'stock' MCP2 with FP6 applied I took the approach of 
wanting to simply upgrade to SMP capable system first. I figured this is 'old &

true' tech and simply wanted to see whether 1) I could make the new hardware 
work and 2) whether I could get the multi-core CPU working in OS2.

So...OS2LDR, OS2KRNL, DOSCALL1.DLL got upgraded to 104aSMP level. I also found 
the matching OS2APIC.PSD driver off of the WSeB fixpak. 

Booting my system AS-IS (meaning, no REMmed out drivers, ect) produced a lock, 
somewhat expected, but I wanted to give it a try anyways...just to see how 
luckly I could be...lol. I then removed all the extra drivers, even USB, sound 
and NIC. This allowed me to boot cleanly into OS2. This first boot was w/o the 
SMP support enabled, the goal here was to basically figure out if the new 
hardware is going to work with my current setup. 

The board uses a AMD SB710 controller (SATA, PATA support) and appears to be 
well supported by the Dani 1.8.5 drivers, so no issues getting my SATA drive 
connected and recognized. Same holds true for the LD DVD writer, SATA as well, 
no issues. The controller is detected by the driver as a ATI IXP SATA device.

Video is the latest version of SNAP, I am currently running ATI X800 AGP card
on
my old machine and knew that the X850 was the 'end of the road' as far as 
accellerated cards go...happy to report that the PCIe version seems just as 
happy as my old AGP version...so in summary, no issues there either.

Audio chip, RealTek ALC888 seems to be supported as well...very little testing 
done at this point in time though. 

Alright....so what about SMP??? Good news there actually. Tossing the 
OS2APIC.PSD driver in with /P=2 /APIC parameters allowed OS2 to recognize the 2

active cores. Booted successfully into the Desktop...no real issues to speak
of.
I am using a temporary NIC, based on ADMTek AN839 chipset since the on-board 
RTL8111 is not supported, or at least I haven't found the drivers. Eventually 
I'll yank the 3Com FastEther NIC out of my current box and move that over.

OK...so where to go next with this?

I did unlock the remaining 2 cores for a total of 4 cores. Attempting to boot 
with /P=4 parameter freezes the desktop just as the screen goes into GUI 
mode...clock shows up and that's it. I am going to try a few more things to see

if I can get this to work, just to satisfy my curiousity really. 

The key part I haven't tested out yet is the USB support...I need to figure out

what drivers to plug in and give it a go. I did disable APM drivers from
loading
as well. 

So...at this point in time, with HPFS376 enabled the machine is chugging and I 
am fairly pleased with how easy it was to migrate to the 'new' hardware. Once I

get a chance to run some benchmarks I'll post the findings.

What really did get me about the SMP experience so far is how much more 
responsive the system seems to be. Even those apps that sometimes do get
'stuck'
can be killed with ease now...heck, even right from the Task List...w/o having 
to resort to something like CAD handler.

OK, so...beyond this, I suppose one could try the APIC stuff...however given
all
the feedback I've seen folks post I'm not quite sure if it's really worth 
spending the $$$ to get the license and be able to graft this onto my current 
system. I have no desire to install eCS over my OS2 current configuration 
either.

Does anyone have any experience attempting to setup 4 CPU/CORE SMP system I 
guess would be my next question!

Thanks for all your help...

-Dariusz







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