YouTube-Video

Does not sound that hard. But as I kept looking for user experiences, I found hardly any detailed information about AM-2 boards.

A forum I can recommend though is AMDZone – some other information I got [...]]]> As I wrote previously, I have been looking for 24/7 hardware to renew my home system: silent, up-to-date and linux compatible.

Does not sound that hard. But as I kept looking for user experiences, I found hardly any detailed information about AM-2 boards.

A forum I can recommend though is AMDZone – some other information I got from Phoronix.

In the end I decided to get an ASUS M2N-E and give it a shot. My complete setup:

AMD Athlon 64×2 3800+
ASUS M2N-E
2 GByte Aeneon DDR2 566MHz
ASUS EN7300GT Silent/HTD
Western Digital 320GByte RAID Edition

What’s the worst that could happen?

First of all, a stupid mistake on my part: I ordered a Zalman CNPS7700 Cu, which is a really nice and quiet cooler, but unfortunately not compatible with AMD’s new AM2-Socket, as I discovered while trying to install the system.
Problem is, there hardly any coolers made for the new socket, so I had to take Zalman’s top of the line model, the 9500 AM2. But it’s silent alright, and really easy to install.

After plugging everything together the system booted. So I inserted my freshly downloaded Kubuntu Edgy Beta CD and? Kernel Panic

Nice, but not totally unexpected, as these things happen with new hardware, if ACPI isn’t fully supported yet. Tried a current Knoppix anyway, resulting also in a kernel panic. After that I tried the Kubuntu Disc with disabled ACPI (’noapic acpi=off pci=bios’), but booting the live-/install-system took hours. Which means more or like 10 minutes, but one gets impatient in these situations.

When it finally had loaded nothing worked as it should be, the cursor jumped around and in the end the system froze. After that I took the system inside out, tried different CD-drives, ran memtest, …

Long story short, after 3 hours of pluging in and out almost every component I took a break, thought about the situation and then updated the BIOS. After that everything worked (almost) flawlessly. I used a Ubuntu install CD instead of Kubuntu, because the installer on the kubuntu disc had some issues with manual parititioning. Afterwards I simply installed kubuntu-desktop to get my beloved KDE.

What follows are the problems I had with my hardware:

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A bit of an exagguration, but all the hardware worked out of the box, especially the onboard gbit NIC and spdif. For AC3-passthrough simply use this with mplayer:

mplayer -ao alsa -ac hwac3

With Xine/Kaffeine you set output to passthrough and might need to disable “mixer_software” and might, depending on your Dolby Digital Receiver need to force the ouput to 48KHz in kcontrol.

Configuring Cool’n'Quiet, extra repositories, … take a look here.

Something to look at is always nice. My desktop right now looks like this:

After that I had to try this:

If you would like to see this in action, have a look at this.

btw: ASUS got a nice tool to flash the bios directly from usb-stick right from the BIOS (EZFlash). You are also able to backup the old BIOS to stick in advance, really convinient.

Seit etwa 3 Jahren, nur unterbrochen von [...]]]> Nachdem mein heimischer Server vorgestern, wohl hitzedingt, seinen Dienst versagte, sah ich bereits mein länger geplantes Hardware-Update erzwungen vorgezogen. Allerdings stellte sich heraus, dass es scheinbar nur die Grafikkarte erwischt hatte, Ersatz war schnell gefunden. Ansich muss ich sagen, bin ich positiv beeindruckt von der bisherigen Standfestigkeit der Hardware.

Seit etwa 3 Jahren, nur unterbrochen von Umzügen, einigen Stromausfällen (*grml) und dem ein oder anderen Hardware-Upgrade, werkelt in dem Server ein Duron 1.3GHz auf einem AsRock-Board mit SIS-Chipsatz. Sowas würde ich nicht gerade die perfekte Server-Hardware nennen, aber billig, ähem, preiswert wars.

Aber nun ist es doch so langsam Zeit für neue Hardware, vor allem leise soll sie sein, weil der Rechner im Wohnzimmer steht. Doch die Kombinations-Möglichkeiten sind vielzählig, die Informationen zur Linux-Kompatibilität leider meist unzureichend.

Zwar steht bei Tuxhardware zu den meisten Boards, dass sie voll unterstützt werden, wenn man allerdings genauer recherchiert, findet man immer wieder Beiträge im Netz über Probleme bei “selten benutzten” Funktionen, wie SPDIF oder Treiber für S-ATA nur binary, etc.

Daher hoffe ich hier auf einige Insights, schreibt doch mal einfach, was Ihr so verbaut habt.

Meine Anforderungen:

• GBit-LAN (am liebsten Onboard)
• PCI-Express
• Onboard-Sound mit Digitalausgang
• Grafikkarte
  • passiv gekühlt (ohne Heatpipes, das erhöht sonst nur die Gehäusetemperatur unnötig)
  • OpenGL 2.0-fähig für “next-generation-x-server”
  • STABILE Linux-Treiber (durch meine 2 Jahre alten Erfahrungen aus dem CG-Lab würde ich da gegen ATI und zu NVIDIA tendieren, aber vielleicht waren die ja fleißig bei ihren Treibern, über die Qualität der Intel-Treiber habe ich nicht viel in Erfahrung bringen können)
• CPU – eher AMD denn Intel, aber auch über VIAs C7 habe ich nachgedacht, aber dazu findet man weder ordentlich Informationen, noch habe ich die je irgendwo angeboten gesehen – nichtmal Listenpreise habe ich bislang gefunden. Cool’n'Quiet und Speedstep sollte doch mittlerweile unterstützt werden, oder?

Mein Vorschlag:

• Athlon64 mit Venice-Kern auf einem Sockel939-Board mit nForce4-Chipsatz, gekühlt von einem Zalman CNPS-7700-CU
• 2GByte DDR-400 Speicher
• Samsung SATA2-HD >= 250GByte
• … vor allem bei der Grafikkarte hab ich noch keine Ahnung, da man selten feste Aussagen zur “Belüftung” bekommt

p.s.: liegt’s an mir, oder ist ubuntu.org schon den ganzen Tag down?

Elephants Dream

As I tried twice in the last 5 years, to get cozy with blender without any success, I am amazed, how this piece of open-source software seems to be able to compete with those 10,000$ and above softwares as 3D Studio Max, Cinema 4D XL or [...]]]> Thanks to golem I stumbled across this project today

Elephants Dream

As I tried twice in the last 5 years, to get cozy with blender without any success, I am amazed, how this piece of open-source software seems to be able to compete with those 10,000$ and above softwares as 3D Studio Max, Cinema 4D XL or Maya. I have to admit, that I haven’t seen the movie yet (torrent is running though), but the screenshots are pretty darn impressive, and half a million downloads (probably not all DLs by torrent registered) are more than a few.

But what keeps bugging me is my inability to adept blender’s interface philosophy. As mentioned before, I have tried to get used to it two times so far. People, who are used to its truly unique interface insist that this is the best way for it to be. Mostly they refuse any arguments regarding a more intuitive and standard (whatever that maybe in this case, but every other 3D modelling software I’ve known starts with a default of 4 perspectives for instance) conform interace.

Having to learn at least 10-15 keyboard shortcuts just isn’t making it easy for new folks to get excited about this software. Or the menu bar being a shaded window of its own really confused me. Anyways, I think blender is a great piece of software, the results are clearly an indication to that. But the complex interface prevents many people from getting started. Why not make a fork that focusses on a more simple interface, maybe this reduces possibilities, but would be ok for those who do not need to work with a 3D-Software on a daily bases? Those people who need this kind of software only once in a while will not learn 15 shortcuts, would they?