Jetway JNC81 (NC81-LF) doesn't support AMD Athlon II X2 250e (and probably C3 stepping) CPUs

I had an opportunity to get AMD Athlon II X2 250e 3GHz 45W CPU. I planned to upgrade it from my current 235e model. Unfortunately, it appeared that Jetway JNC81 (NC81-LF) didn't support it. Though it is a bit to fast conclusion but I think this motherboard just doesn't support any C3 revision Regor Athlon II X2 CPUs. So you probably won't be able to use 270u and similar Regor C3 CPUs (even 240e if it is not C2 stepping one) but I can't confirm it. I contacted to Jetway support and they replied that the BIOS won't be updated to this motherboard (because they don't have access to Award BIOS code and they can't even tell what is actually supported). The only option is to get updated Jetway JNC84 model with AMI BIOS. I decided that it will be to "pricey" for me right now (300 MHz upgrade is just too small). I just sold 250e. If you plan to upgrade your JNC81 be aware that you need to test compatibility especially with newer cores.

250e was heavier than 235e and used a little bit different, more rugged heat spreader. It was manufactured at 48th week of 2009. It is 9-10 months earlier than introduction date and 12 weeks later than my 235e. AMD probably released them only when they had sufficient quantity. You usually can't find them on the market as they used for OEM. I bought one in ebay. Unfortunately, I was forced to sold it very soon but it was confirmed working by the new owner.

March 2011 big CPUs collection update

I've just updated my CPUs (and other chips) collection with lot of new items. Most of them I got from very helpful CPU collector from USA who kept them for several months in his house, however, other arrivals were interesting too. This update was one of the most joyful for me as it added several new architectures, engineering samples and other rare, unusual chips. No other update had so much rare items. I still working on photos to picasa web album (as it is still the main "place" of my collection, though I started a work on management program and planning to redo my website which is quite dead now. I guess it can take a long time to finish but I determined to do everything this year). I'll add some photos from earlier updates too (generally QED, PMC MIPS CPUs and one i960).

New architectures:
Western Electric 32100 (hunted for a long time)
National Semiconductor 32032
NEC V60 (I've got newer NEC V70 actually)

Engineering samples
Intel Itanium 9040 ES (dual core Montecito with 18MB cache)
Motorola 68EC000 Sample (low cost 68000 for embedded controller applications)
IDT 79RC32V334-150BB Eng. Sample (MIPS RC32300 processor)
Fujitsu MB86903-40 ES
AMD 8100048021 Opteron Engineering Sample Socket 940 (yes, one more exception, but it is worth and I'll try it in action if it will boot)

Other interesting CPUs and chips:
Compaq Alpha 21264C-1225TPN (my first Alpha made by Compaq and first 21264C model)
HP Alpha 21364 - 1150 /EV7 (first Alpha made by HP and first 21364 model)
Unfinished DEC support chip for Alpha systems (beautiful)
Fujitsu MB87327B - (most likely) Clipper C400 early MMU before integrated CAMMU (cache and memory management unit) chip was introduced. My own research helped to identify it with help of other collectors.
Intel 80960MX SD014 chip die (first real CPU die in my collection)
AMD 29000 337-2900 (first my 29000 model (I had 29040), unusual markings)


Enjoy these photos now:

Most of new chips

Itanium generations comparison

Fujitsu MB86903-40 ES

Upgrade to Debian Linux 6

Debian 6.0.0 "squeeze" was released February 6th, 2011. As I use Debian on my NAS server I decided to upgrade system to this new version. However, I decided to perform a clean install, because of this firstly I backed up some scripts and configuration files (like smb.conf, fstab, rsync scripts, crontab and some others). Later I downloaded small cd image for installation.

My NAS configuration consists of Patriot Xporter XT USB flash drive which is used for operating system (it had one ext3 formatted partition and one swap partition) and two different 1.5TB (Seagate and WD) SATA disk drives (no RAID) . One of them is ext3 formatted and is used to share data across the network, the other one is a xfs formatted disk for back up (rsync is used to synchronize them). Firstly, I connected SATA CD-ROM to ADPE4S-PB controller, however, it worked incorrectly on debian  (I'll discuss later on this matter), because of this I needed to reattach it to USB port (through SATA to USB adapter). Debian CD bootloader gives two general options to install system. The first one is ncurses (text) based and it is selected by default and the other option is graphical install. I chose graphical install and installer loaded without problems. I reformatted my system partition to ext4 this time. Everything else left unchanged. Software selection was made by categories. Firstly I chose everything except graphical desktop environment, laptop and DNS server but the install process didn't go smoothly first time. Deselection of the print server solved the problem and Debian installed correctly. I don't know what was wrong at first time. I selected some Duisburg  repository and it could be the case with some missing packages. The last problem was bootloader (which is grub2). MBR was written to first hdd drive instead of flash drive. Because of this I needed to reinstall bootloader after first boot to Patriot drive though it was configured correctly. 

Configuration went very smoothly. I updated fstab file, copied old smb.conf, rsync, crontab files, reconfigured sshd and my server  was ready. Later I added transmission-daemon with its web interface. I needed to use old torrent-flux in previous Debian version as transmission-daemon didn't work for some reason. 

The boot time and responsiveness feels better but I don't have exact numbers and it is not a fair comparison due to different number of services and other filesystem.  Currently Debian boots between 34 and 40 seconds.


What is more, I decided to test my ADPE4S-PB daughterboard (Marvell 88SE6145). As I mentioned it didn't work correctly during install. However, I found a workaround which helped to solve a problem for me (at least, partially). I added ahci.marvell_enable=1 in separate file stored in /etc/modprobe.d/ folder and ran update-initramfs -u command. Debian recognized attached devices after that and they could be used. You can read on provided link above about what this option does.

Finally, I decided to test HDDs attached to integrated VX800 controller under AHCI mode (RAID option in BIOS). I was very pleased that the bug had been resolved and drives hadn't fall to PIO mode. Everything worked correctly so I think it is possible to make real (soft) RAID finally. Sorry, I still not tested any RAID setup not with VX800 nor with ADPE4S-PB.


I also tried to update to a newer BIOS version once again. Unfortunately, kernel still hanged up just after boot loader started to load it. So the problem remained.

Changes:

• Debian 6 uses grub2 boot loader instead of grub by default 
• Option to use ext4 instead of ext3 on root(/) partition (default still ext3) 
• Transmission-daemon works correctly 
• HDDs transfer method is not dropped to PIO mode anymore if RAID option is selected in BIOS for integrated VX800 SATA controller
• System boot is faster now, the system responsiveness is better
• I found a workaround for ADPE4S-PB (Marvell 88SE6145) SATA controller to make SATA drives to be identified on Debian (It is not a new version workaround but I tried daughterboard with this version only)

The same:

• Still needs modprobe acpi-cpufreq to be executed to make CPU lower it frequency (another option to recompile the kernel but this time I decided not to). Update: I found this wiki page to solve frequency scaling problem. You need to install cpufrequtils and cpu frequency scaling will be enabled automatically during system start up.
• Linux kernel still hangs with newer than A05 BIOS version (Jetway JNF76-N1GL-LF motherboard)

 Not tested:

• Graphical environment (openchrome), though graphical install worked ok
• any RAID setup (system BIOS supports only one RAID controller at once, ADPE4S-PB can be used only if VX800 SATA controller is set to IDE mode)

Final words
I was very happy with smooth Debian Linux update. I didn't expect that I would do everything in less than one evening. What is more, it solved some problems like VX800 AHCI/RAID support, added new features (for example, ext4 and grub2), upgraded my software and felt faster, cleaner and more responsive. Finally I managed to solve some old problems like ADPE4S-PB support and transmission-daemon. This upgrade was very successful and useful for me and it gave a big plus for Debian in my mind :). If you think about such upgrade too, give it a try. Especially if you have SMP system. Don't forget to backup current system. The last thing I wish to be solved is kernel hang up problem with newer than A05 BIOS versions.