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2. Computers/Motherboards/BIOS

ISA, VLB, EISA, and PCI buses are all supported.

PS/2 and Microchannel (MCA) is supported in the standard kernel 2.0.7. There is support for MCA in kernel 2.1.16 and newer, but this code is still a little buggy. For more information you can always look at the Micro Channel Linux Home Page (Where is this page gone to ??)

2.1 Specific system/motherboard/BIOS

• IBM PS/2 MCA systems
• EFA E5TX-AT motherboard has a solvable problem with RedHat Linux 5.0 and possibly other versions of Linux. It spontaneously reboots while probing hardware. To solve, update BIOS to version 1.01. Get the BIOS update at http://www.efacorp.com/download/Motherboard/e5tx101.exe.
• The Edom MP080 motherboard needs a BIOS flash for Linux to work. Without the BIOS flash Linux will reboot during the hardware scan. for the BIOS flash check http://www.edom.com/tech/tech.htm and http://www.edom.com/download

Many new PCI boards are causing a couple of failure messages during boot time when "Probing PCI Hardware". The procedure presents the folowing message

    Warning : Unknown PCI device (8086:7100).  Please read include/linux/pci.h

It tells you to read the pci.h file. From this file is the following quote

         PROCEDURE TO REPORT NEW PCI DEVICES
    We are trying to collect information on new PCI devices, using
    the standard PCI identification procedure. If some warning is
    displayed at boot time, please report 
         - /proc/pci
         - your exact hardware description. Try to find out
           which device is unknown. It may be you mainboard chipset.
           PCI-CPU bridge or PCI-ISA bridge.
         - If you can't find the actual information in your hardware
           booklet, try to read the references of the chip on the board.
         - Send all that to linux-pcisupport@cao-vlsi.ibp.fr,
           and I'll add your device to the list as soon as possible

    BEFORE you send a mail, please check the latest linux releases
    to be sure it has not been recently added.

           Thanks
                 Frederic Potter.

Normally spoken you motherboard and the unknown PCI devices will function correctly.

2.2 Unsupported

• Supermicro P5MMA with BIOS versions 1.36, 1.37 and 1.4. Linux will not boot on this motherboard. A new (beta) release of the BIOS which makes Linux boot, is available at ftp.supermicro.com/mma9051.zip
• Supermicro P5MMA98. Linux will not boot on this motherboard. A new (beta) release of the BIOS which makes Linux boot, is available at ftp.supermicro.com/a98905.zip?
• DataExpert Corp. ExpertColor TX531 V1.0 motherboard with chipset ACER M1531 (Date: 9729, TS6) and ACER M1543 (Date: 9732 TS6) seems not reproducible segmentations faults, kernel oops and kernel hangs under heavy load and tape access. The problem seems to be the PCI-bus, respectively the ACER chipset.