Motherboard stupidity of the day

[Jonathan D. Arnold / Daemon Dancing]

David Kramer wrote:
> So I'm shopping for a motherboard, now that I picked the processor.
> Gotta support Core 2 Duo, 1333Mhz fsb, at least one real COM port, NO
> onboard video, and somewhat sane layout.
> 
> So I find this board that looks great.  It's the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3.
> Googling for reviews, I find
> http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/406
> which contains:
> 
> "It is very important to notice that the single ATA/133 port available
> on this motherboard is controlled by the JMicron chip, not by the
> chipset. This means that if you still have a parallel IDE optical drive
> it will only be recognized on Windows after you install the “Gigabyte
> SATA2” driver. The problem is that this driver comes on the motherboard
> CD-ROM, and you won’t be able to install it, as the system does not
> recognize your optical drive. You can download the driver from the net,
> however the driver for the on-board LAN port is also on the CD-ROM… The
> only option you have is to copy the JMicron driver from the CD to a
> floppy disk or a USB pen drive using another PC. This problem happens
> not only with this motherboard from Gigabyte, but also with all other
> motherboards based on Intel P965 chipset we’ve seen to date. Of course
> if you have a SATA optical drive you won't face this issue."
> 
> My research so far is inconclusive whether this mobo will have problems
> with a recent distro (part because so many of the reported problems are
> from overclockers, and partly because it seems like there's been quite a
> few versions of this board), but.....
> 
> How do you make a motherboard that Windows can't access IDE devices
> with???!!!?!

Well, this is just plain *wrong*. This is exactly the motherboard I have,
and I have a plain jane IDE DVD-RW drive and it installed Fedora 7, openSUSE
10.3 beta 3 and Windows XP just fine. I had a problem with openSUSE 10.2
but the workaround documented here:

http://www.softwareinreview.com/cms/content/view/60/

in the section "The "CD not found" error", which does mention the jmicron
controller. Basically, you have to enable the jmicron driver at boot time.

So far I like the board. My only real complaint is no Firewire, but I don't
really use it. Also, it only has connections for 2 IDE drives, which is
kind of limiting. I hope to get my post describing my home brew computer
building up soon on Linux Brain Dump.

-- 
Jonathan Arnold     (mailto:jdarnold-Xst6pqGrDNhg9hUCZPvPmw at public.gmane.org)
Linux Brain Dump - Linux Notes, HOWTOs and Tutorials:
    http://www.linuxbraindump.org

Daemon Dancing in the Dark, an Open OS weblog:
    http://freebsd.amazingdev.com/blog/

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