Recommend a Micro ATX motherboard
 

I would like to buy a Micro ATX motherboard which is compatible with Solaris 10.

I would like the following to be on the board and to work:

sound chipset
Ethernet 10/100
board chipset
AGP
etc.

Can anyone recommend a motherboard. I have looked through the Sun Solaris
HCL, but the types of the boards are not listed.

Also, what is the best graphics card? I suppose in Gnome, I should be able to get just about anything to work, right? (the Java Desktop ..whatever... is really Gnome)

Thanks,

William

So StarOffice is really Gnome too ?

You're a senior member, do I need to tell you what Star Office is?
As a senior member, is there something useful you can tell me or not?
I guess you don't have information to answer the original question,
which is what I really want to know.

The Solaris 10 cleverly packaged "Gnome" must use X.org or XFree86, so I think
one should be able to somehow get drivers for most modern graphics cards.
But I wouldn't want to do too much messing around with an already working
system.

I have tried to install Solaris on three different systems, and it failed to
detect the network and sound hardwear in all three cases.

Ekkume

Did you look at the manufacturer sites for your net card, mine
(Marvell Yukon Gigabit Ethernet 10/100/1000Base-T Adapter)
did not work 'out of the box' but I downloaded the Solaris
driver from their site, I installed it following their instructions
and all went well.

For sound, try : http://www.tools.de/solaris/
and for drivers in general, look at :
http://solaris-x86.org/software/drivers/

Thanks! I will have a look. It will be really great to finally Solaris out as root, and not just in a TTY terminal.

Ekkume

Do not overestimate the "senior member" status, it is just a matter of posting count, regardless of quality ...
Of course I hope I deserve it anyway ;)
I perfectly know what StarOffice is, I was just reacting, and probably overreacting, this happens to me from time to time, to the unnecessary and, at least is it how I perceived it, unkind comment about Sun's Open Standards based graphic environment.
I can try, I usually do.
Correct, I've no experience with micro ATX mainboards.
There may be some enhancements or limitations between Solaris implementation and others.
One of the best source for this area is Alan Coppersmith's (one of the Xorg architects) blog:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/ala...og?catname=X11
Not sure about that, Xorg drivers collection is already included with Solaris.
This is an interesting piece of information, could you share details with the rest of us ?
On what network and sound chipsets were these systems based on ?
I understand your goal of finding a working configuration, but knowing which boxes do not work and why is also what will help Solaris to be improved. There may also have configuration tricks to have these three cases to work properly.
Finally, I do not understand why you focus on Gnome or X11 while the issues you had seems unrelated to these softwares but to network and audio kernel support.

Well the ATX motherboard I just tried it on, I learned that I could have gotten at least the network
(10/100) working with some "gani" drivers that I can download, that aren't official Sun, and which have warnings about potential stability problems and so forth.

There was the fellow who posted the www.tools.de/solaris link above, that appears to have sound
drivers relevant to the motherboard. It is an Epox (repackaged VIA) 8KRAI-X.

Any comment I made about Sun percieved as unkind was a mistake. I have nothing but great respect for Sun, especially since they made Solaris open source, and have been allowing free private use of Solaris already for years. I also am very grateful for their contributions with the OpenOffice project. This is software I use regularly. And this is why I want to build a system where Solaris works. And Jonathan Schwartz says straight out that Gnome is the preferred desktop environment for Solaris. (It is called Java
Desktop something-or-other. I don't remember.)

Ekkume

Ok, thanks for the information and sorry for the misunderstanding.