Hi folks. I'd love to buy an Abit Max3 mobo, but I want to run Linux on it. I'd like to stick with redhat, but I will consider other distros that offer auto-updating capabilities (mandrake, etc). I'd need support for the built-in CSA gigabit ethernet (ICH5R), as well as the built-in 6 channels of SATA (ICH5R + Silicon Image controller), and built-in audio (RealTek ALC650), and on-board firewire/usb, and AGP 8x for a ATI 9600 vid card.

Has anyone got this working? What exactly did you have to do to make it happen?

TIA!

You should be more concerned about the motherboard chipset support. As that board has just been released, you can rest assured that it isn't in 2.4 kernel's by name. 8X AGP and ATI are also a concern.

The sound, sata, gigether, and usb are non-issues. I have no storys to tell about this board as I do not even know windows people with it, much less linux folks. So, I'll end here.

Hmm...I thought all I have to worry about is the Intel 875P chipset. Also, I was under the impression that the 2.4.22 kernel (which I believe is going to be included in Fedora core rel 1) supports this chipset. Are there other chips specific to motherboards that I have to worry about?

I see. In that case I don't have to go with ATI--Nvidia would be perfectly fine, say an FX5200. Is 8x an issue in general, or just with ATI? Which vid card would you recommend? It really doesn't matter to me, I pretty much just want something cheap that works.

Are you sure SATA is not an issue? I recall seeing a lot of posts and reports of people having problems with SATA and linux. The Abit board has 6 SATA channels--2 from the ICH5R chip that is part of the 875p chipset, and 4 from a PCI-based Silicon Image 3114 chip. Both these chips offer RAID support, but I am not interested in that which I suppose makes things easier. I would guess that the ICH5R SATA is supported by the 2.4.22 kernel, but what of the 3114 chip?


Thanks for your reply!

I just spent the last few days with this motherboard. WinXP Pro installed with MoBo supplied drivers on 2x SATA WD 120GB drives with H/W RAID-0 on SATA-3&4 - that's the first two channels on the SII3114 chip. Everything appears to work! Now, on to Liinux. Added an old 8.4GB IDE on IDE#2. Tried Mandrake 9.2: installed on IDE2 OK, gigabit eithernet FAILED, no /dev's for the SATA, NO sound driver. Tried SuSE 9-live: found IDE2 OK, gigabit eithernet looks OK but not tested yet, no errors for sound but not tested, still no /dev's for the SATA. BTW- I'm using a MATROX G450 dual head @ 4x AGP. Mandrake auto-found this card in dual head mode. I'm now ready to get a larger IDE/100 drive and use this until I find how to get the SATAs working. Also - working your way through the BIOS is a "bear". There are separate BIOS key activations for each of the SATA controllers. I still looking for the "magic bullet" in the BIOS settings.

for sound you need to insert modules for either (the ALSA-type) snd-intel_8x0 or (the OSS-type) i810_audio, since it uses the generic AC97 interface ont he southbridge. The ALSA will have many more of the ALC650's functions to work with but the application support will be more limited... and the OSS compatibility modules aren't perfect drop-in replacements for the OSS core but they will probably do for *some* non-alsa-aware apps. ESD, arts, and xmms can all output directly to ALSA and many other apps can output to ESD and arts.

i hope someone gets on this CSA gigabit soon, i don't care about SATA but i NEED gigabit and it seems the intel gigabit drivers are limited to a handful of device revisions on an handful of chips. get it together, intel... that board is my primary target until someone releases a better one. I don't wanna thoroughly clog the PCI bus with a gigabit add-on NIC if I can help it...

I'm currently setting up a machine with this mobo and RH9, and I am nothing but pleased with it so far. To get the ethernet working, you need to get and compile the latest e1000 module from intel. The ones that ship with rh9 won't work, but e1000-5.2.30.1 got things going with no problems. To get the RAID working under RH 9, you need to find the Silicon Image drivers and install them. afaik, they are not open source, though.

USB and firewire worked with the rh9 install, and I'm getting the sound working now. Then I'm in buisness!

If there's still interest in this thread, I'll post the specifics on how to get all this working.

In case anyone wants to know, here are the specs:
Abit ic7-max
P4 3.0 GHz
2Gb DDR400 ram
2 WD 120Gb HDD SATA RAID-0 on sata 3&4

sweet, thanks for the tip...that's the best news i've heard since i found out how fast vectorlinux is on a 200MHz K-6

YES! post the specifics please

Nox