Weekend Adventures in Upgrade Land: Explosions, Kernel 2.6 and a Processor for Sale

[Jason Clinton]

   I've blown almost an entire weekend and $410 because I decided to
   shift some processors around Friday night. I decided to move my 1800
   Athlon XP processor from my server to my desktop, my 1600 Athlon XP
   processor from my desktop to my other workstation; and the 1200 Athlon
   from my workstation to the server. This story includes details of
   breaking traces on motherboards, the magic smoke escaping from my
   Athlon XP 1600 processor, a new Gigabyte KT600-based bothboard w/
   DDR400 and a new Athlon XP 2600 to go with it, adventures in upgrading
   to kernel 2.6.0-test5 because the KT600 is not supported by 2.4.x and
   will not be, AND a brand-new processor for sale, cheap!
    1. Removed the fans and processors from all machines involved.
    2. Attempted to install the Athlon XP 1800 in machine that previously
       had a 1600. Machine refuses to boot. No beep, no nothing.
    3. Hum. Ok. Lets try the workstation. Insert 1600 chip in to 1200
       box. Same thing.
    4. Get on internet and discover that the 1800 should be working in
       the 1600; the 1600 in the 1200 will need a BIOS flash.
    5. Reinsert 1200 in to 1200 box. Flash BIOS. Confirm all is well.
       Reinsert 1600 core in to 1200 box. Power up. Long warning tone and
       smoke and a horrible smell of burning transistors is ejected from
       the region of the processor. Scratch one processor.
    6. We shake our heads and put the 1200 back in the 1200 box. The rest
       of the machine is okay. 1200 stays there.
    7. 1800 in 1600 box is still not working. We take the 1800 back to
       it's original box (which, thus far, has been left alone) to see if
       we perhaps statically damaged the 1800 chip. In the process of
       reattaching the fan to the processor die, the screwdriver slips
       from the fan mounting clip and punches a hole in a board trace to
       the memory interfaces. (We didn't discover that the hole was there
       until much latter.) We curse the mounting clip many times but get
       it reattached. This box won't boot now. No beeps, no nothing.
    8. At this point, we think we've destroyed two processors. Saturday
       morning we head down to Computer Depo and buy 2 new processors.
       One of our original motherboards doesn't support the new T-bird
       Athlon cores. They don't make the Palimino cores anymore so we
       have to buy a new motherboard and memory to host the new chip.
       Thus the Athlon XP 2600 and DDR400 Gigabyte board is purchased. We
       also buy a Athlon XP 2000, the smallest they have.
    9. Spent 4 hours removing the old motherboard from the desktop and
       replacing it with the new Gigabyte. Boot in to linux to find that
       most everything is the same since the old MB was via based,
       however AGP and USB are not working at all; the MB is USB 2.0 and
       AGP 3.0. Support only exists in kernel 2.6.0-test3 and higher.
   10. Pull kernel-2.6.0 and copy my old .config and reconfigure the
       whole system adding the new built in ALSA, disabling the alsasound
       init scripts. Reboots and works okay on first try however, Gnome,
       KDE and xterm cannot open a new terminal. I discover that /dev/pts
       has wierd permissions. I add a correcting chmod command to
       /etc/init.d/local.start to fix it. KDE and xterm are fixed. Gnome
       still doesn't work.
   11. Somewhere in here wine has been completely zapped.
   12. Go back to 1800 server and insert new 2000 chip. The system now
       posts but reports a memory problem. We examine the board more
       closely and find that the slipped screwdriver punched a hole in a
       single trace leading the the DDR memory interface.
   13. We give up on that box and decide to just use the non-T-bird
       supporting motherboard from the desktop system and an older 750
       Athlon we have lying around. After a few hours of removing the bad
       MB and installing the new-old one, the server is back online --
       reconfiguration still in progress.

   SO, I now have a brand new T-bird Athlon XP 2000 and AMD fan that I'd
   be willing to sell for $45 (paid $72). Still in the box. The PMC heat
   compound on the bottom of the fan will need to be cleaned and replaced
   (a few bucks at a computer store).

   Anyone have any kernel 2.6.0 tips? So far it's been pretty stable. 3D
   acceleration is not working very well -- complex OpenGL apps seg
   fault. I also get some wierd depmod error messages when booting. IDE
   SCSI emulation is also not working.