potpourrix

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See lspci below.

Bottom line: I will sell or just dump this brand new motherboard and replace it with one from another manufacturer. It has wasted money and costly time for me.

This mobo cannot install any distribution of Linux successfully, including ones containing the 2.6.x kernel. The IDE interface gives errors on the hardisk and CD-ROM when I/O traffic is heavy, especially during the file-decompression and file-unpacking phase of software installation. Symptoms range randomly from freezes to halts to segmentation faults (deadly segv signal).

This mobo was sold as a package of a complete computer without OS.

The motherboard documentation is very sloppy. Much of it is cut-and-pasted screenshots of the BIOS screens, which often contain no information to support the F1 help function.

The BIOS also appears to be sloppy. Menus and labelling do not match their contents, which suggests that another BIOS was copied and hacked to support this mobo. Not very re-assuring....

The company's support policy is unacceptable. In reply to a detailed e-mail to ECS Support, I recieved a two-line e-mail: "We do not support Linux. See www.sis.com." The company immediately pushed its support responsibility onto the chipset supplier SiS without asking me anything about the BIOS.

lspci says:

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 741/741GX/M741 Host (rev 03)
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS]: Unknown device 0003
0000:00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS964 [MuTIOL Media IO] (rev 36)
0000:00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE] (rev 01)
0000:00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] Sound Controller (rev a0)
0000:00:03.0 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f)
0000:00:03.1 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f)
0000:00:03.2 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f)
0000:00:03.3 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 2.0 Controller
0000:00:04.0 Ethernet controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS900 PCI Fast Ethernet (rev 91)
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 661FX/M661FX/M661MX/741/M741/760/M760 PCI/AGP

foolswisdom

Is there such a product as the Elitegroup 741MX-G ? I do not see that product on the company's pages . I see that Linspire claims to work with the ECS 741GX-M .

Bob3

EliteGroup 741GX-M is the "default" motherboard used in the Linspire flavor Linux boxes sold by FRYS/Outpost.com.
I've gone through 3 of them so far & they have been working fairly well right out of the box. (using them for web surfing in an office environment)
I haven't done much "stress testing" but for a sub-$200 computer I have no complaints.

mfgrace

If anyone has had any success with Linux on this motherboard please post.
Linspire is a bad version of Linux. Nothing seems to work unless you purchase it through Linspire.

Maybe someone can see if it is a bios issue that is only compatible with Linspire?

scottprovost

set the drive geometry manualy and do not try to install anything using audio. The Linspire boxed use batacudas that have hacked controlers that missinform the bios about drive geometry to you have to use linspire. FreeBSD install warns you and lets you correct the geometry.