After about eight years of working properly, P4 motherboard of my desktop computer gave way. The operating systems (both Windows XP Home SP3 and Fedora 12) would not boot properly and if booted somehow would crash all of a sudden. The motherboard was of HIS (Maxtone) make, ATX sized, Intel 845 chipset based with three SDRAM slots, two USB1 ports and six PCI slots (and without onboard display adaptor). I had put Intel P4 2.0 GHZ processor, nVidia GeForce FX5500 with 256MB RAM in the AGP slot, 2×512MB + 256 MB RAM, an ethernet PCI card, a USB2 PCI card, a Firewire PCI card and a SATA hard disk through a SATA-to-IDE-and-IDE-to-SATA converter. After considerable thinking, I realized that except for occasional raw video playing, the computing power of the system is still sufficient for my work.
The market survey revealed that new P4 motherboards with socket 478 (which would take P4 processor upto 2.4 GHz speed) are available in market with one year warranty. These motherboards have one floppy port, two IDE ports, two SATA ports, two USB2 ports (and probably two additional front USB2 ports), one ethernet (LAN) port, onboard intel 845 display chip with 128MB VRAM, two PCI slots and one AGP slot (8×), and are of microATX size. However, these support only DDR1 RAM (two sticks). Also, it did not have support for cabinet fan, which I was not using even in my earlier motherboard. Except for the firewire card, other PCI cards used in my earlier motherboard were not required in this motherboard. The price of this motherboard was Rs 1600/- in July 2010 including delivery charges. I obtained 2×512MB DDR1 RAM from a friend, who recently bought a new computer. I felt procuring the motherboard at this juncture would be the best bargain; I would upgrade to Intel Core i5, when its prices come down further in two years or so.
The motherboard was marketed by SRM Distribution Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai ("SRM: Technology Beyond Limits") (manufactured by Lord Electronics Co., Ltd). It came in impressive factory sealed packing. I removed the processor fan and the processor from the old motherboard and mounted both on the new motherboard and made other connections. Alas, no display. However, the motherboard, the harddisk and the keyboard was getting powered on. I felt sorry for my decision of continuing with P4. Later, I realized that the problem was that the processor was loose; it was coming out of its socket even when its lever was locked. I was pretty sure that I am putting the processor in the correct manner as it was getting properly locked in the old motherboard. I fired the retailer and made him replace the motherboard with a new one (instead of going to the service centre). However, in this motherboard too, the processor was coming out of its socket. After searching in the net, I realized that the processor is to be slightly pressed in a new socket while its lever is being locked. I mounted the processor in the correct way and the computer started normally. I apologized the poor retailer, who fortunately did not mind.
Although the BIOS supported booting from a USB drive, I could never boot the system using it. Never mind, as it was true for the earlier motherboard as well.
However, I faced a peculiar problem in Linux. If I used onboard display, then the linux (Fedora 12 and 13) booted normally. But xorg.conf generated while using the onboard display had showed both the display adaptors as Intel and placing the monitor on the AGP card after boot did not show any displaay.
If I used nVidia card fitted to the AGP slot, the system gave errors ending with “Fixing recursive fault but reboot is needed”. Rebooting gave the same fault again. Log files did not record these boot attempts. I could load the proprietary nVidia driver from RPM Fusion site while using onboard display. Then I connected the monitor to the nVidia card and rebooted the system (with BIOS display sequence being the onboard display first). The monitor remained blank initially, but became “on” when the X started and then it behaved more or less normally. However, xorg.conf file had both the displays as nVidia and correcting one to Intel did not have any effect on rebooting; it returned to nVidia. Studying nVidia driver documentation indicated that the problem is with agpgart of latest kernels; nvidia agp can handle intel adaptor. You have to pass “agp=off” command to the kernel during boot (by correcting the bootloader configuration file). This has resulted in the computer booting from AGP card (display sequence in BIOS being AGP first) right from the beginning and showing no problem in starting X. I have not tried using two monitors (one each on the AGP card and the onboard display), but I hope it should work by correcting the xorg.conf. If necessary, identify the two display adaptors by their BusID.
For passing “agp=off” to kernel only once, press any key during the grub screen, go to the desired OS (for example, Fedora) using up and down arrows and then press “E”. Go to the line beginning with kernel and add “agp=off” without the quotes at the end of this line. Press return and press “B” to boot. If it works, then edit your grub.conf file to add these words at the end of the desired kernel line.
I noticed that "agp=off" command is to be passed to the kernel in Fedora 13, Fedora 14, Fedora 15 and Fedora 17 as well. I did not try Fedora 16.
Using the method mentioned at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=745202#c94, I have been able to obtain Gnome Shell (normal mode of Gnome 3) in Fedora 17, but it is definitely sluggish; Gnome Fallback mode or Xfce provides reasonable speed. Another problem I notice in Fedora 17 is that the voice has interruptions in totem movie player, although rhythmbox and amarok work properly in this PC.
The market survey revealed that new P4 motherboards with socket 478 (which would take P4 processor upto 2.4 GHz speed) are available in market with one year warranty. These motherboards have one floppy port, two IDE ports, two SATA ports, two USB2 ports (and probably two additional front USB2 ports), one ethernet (LAN) port, onboard intel 845 display chip with 128MB VRAM, two PCI slots and one AGP slot (8×), and are of microATX size. However, these support only DDR1 RAM (two sticks). Also, it did not have support for cabinet fan, which I was not using even in my earlier motherboard. Except for the firewire card, other PCI cards used in my earlier motherboard were not required in this motherboard. The price of this motherboard was Rs 1600/- in July 2010 including delivery charges. I obtained 2×512MB DDR1 RAM from a friend, who recently bought a new computer. I felt procuring the motherboard at this juncture would be the best bargain; I would upgrade to Intel Core i5, when its prices come down further in two years or so.
The motherboard was marketed by SRM Distribution Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai ("SRM: Technology Beyond Limits") (manufactured by Lord Electronics Co., Ltd). It came in impressive factory sealed packing. I removed the processor fan and the processor from the old motherboard and mounted both on the new motherboard and made other connections. Alas, no display. However, the motherboard, the harddisk and the keyboard was getting powered on. I felt sorry for my decision of continuing with P4. Later, I realized that the problem was that the processor was loose; it was coming out of its socket even when its lever was locked. I was pretty sure that I am putting the processor in the correct manner as it was getting properly locked in the old motherboard. I fired the retailer and made him replace the motherboard with a new one (instead of going to the service centre). However, in this motherboard too, the processor was coming out of its socket. After searching in the net, I realized that the processor is to be slightly pressed in a new socket while its lever is being locked. I mounted the processor in the correct way and the computer started normally. I apologized the poor retailer, who fortunately did not mind.
Although the BIOS supported booting from a USB drive, I could never boot the system using it. Never mind, as it was true for the earlier motherboard as well.
However, I faced a peculiar problem in Linux. If I used onboard display, then the linux (Fedora 12 and 13) booted normally. But xorg.conf generated while using the onboard display had showed both the display adaptors as Intel and placing the monitor on the AGP card after boot did not show any displaay.
If I used nVidia card fitted to the AGP slot, the system gave errors ending with “Fixing recursive fault but reboot is needed”. Rebooting gave the same fault again. Log files did not record these boot attempts. I could load the proprietary nVidia driver from RPM Fusion site while using onboard display. Then I connected the monitor to the nVidia card and rebooted the system (with BIOS display sequence being the onboard display first). The monitor remained blank initially, but became “on” when the X started and then it behaved more or less normally. However, xorg.conf file had both the displays as nVidia and correcting one to Intel did not have any effect on rebooting; it returned to nVidia. Studying nVidia driver documentation indicated that the problem is with agpgart of latest kernels; nvidia agp can handle intel adaptor. You have to pass “agp=off” command to the kernel during boot (by correcting the bootloader configuration file). This has resulted in the computer booting from AGP card (display sequence in BIOS being AGP first) right from the beginning and showing no problem in starting X. I have not tried using two monitors (one each on the AGP card and the onboard display), but I hope it should work by correcting the xorg.conf. If necessary, identify the two display adaptors by their BusID.
For passing “agp=off” to kernel only once, press any key during the grub screen, go to the desired OS (for example, Fedora) using up and down arrows and then press “E”. Go to the line beginning with kernel and add “agp=off” without the quotes at the end of this line. Press return and press “B” to boot. If it works, then edit your grub.conf file to add these words at the end of the desired kernel line.
I noticed that "agp=off" command is to be passed to the kernel in Fedora 13, Fedora 14, Fedora 15 and Fedora 17 as well. I did not try Fedora 16.
Using the method mentioned at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=745202#c94, I have been able to obtain Gnome Shell (normal mode of Gnome 3) in Fedora 17, but it is definitely sluggish; Gnome Fallback mode or Xfce provides reasonable speed. Another problem I notice in Fedora 17 is that the voice has interruptions in totem movie player, although rhythmbox and amarok work properly in this PC.
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