Knoppix freezes with Soyo Dragon Utltra KT-333 mobo

Hi all

I've used Knoppix on several machines and like it. I'm now trying to install it on a box which has a Soyo Dragon Ultra KT-333 mobo, COrsair XMS PC2700 RAM, and an Athlon XP-2100+. This system has been running WinXP just fine, and I've also run memtest86 on it for several hours with no problems. The video card is a Geforce 4 MX.

However, Knoppix just freezes up on me. Sometimes it can take a while (say 10 minutes), and sometimes it happens almost immediately. It can freeze whether or not I boot off the CD (latest 3.3 I believe) or off the hard drive.

Anyone have any ideas? I'm about to give up and go back to Windows :-)

g.

You might want to try the noXYZ "cheatcodes" at the boot prompt. Try "knoppix noapic" for a start...

I'm starting to think this might be a heat problem. CPU is running at 77 degrees. I tried running FreeBSD 4.7 (which has never failed me on any hardware) and it froze up too.

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Originally Posted by gramster

I'm starting to think this might be a heat problem. CPU is running at 77 degrees. I tried running FreeBSD 4.7 (which has never failed me on any hardware) and it froze up too.

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You need to get a better cpu fan and some more air circulation in that case or you are going to fry the system.

It's a bad case. I bought it from someone just for turning this into a MythTV box. The CPU fan is the same as in the old case which worked fine. Turns out there are known heat problems with these cases :-(

You might want to look at water cooling or ducting cold air from outside of the case to the cpu and the warm air out again.

I suggest these because the last thing you want in/from a MythTV box is more noise, so ducting or water cooling would be a better option than other fans.

This case is designed for PVR use; apparently some went out with BAD PSUs though. It makes very little noise because the PSU fan is on the inside, not the outside.

Anyway, it turns out heat is not my only problem. With the case open and the CPU running at a much more respectable 40-50 degrees, I still have freezes. I tried swapping CPU, RAM and video card (the only other card is the Hauppauge TV card), to no avail. I also disabling the on-board USB, serial and parallel controllers. So far nothing has helped.

I'm probably going to have to try a different motherboard, even though this Soyo was working fine. It has the advantage of having SPDIF audio I/O connectors, which none of my other mobos do. :-(

I tried the noapic boot option; it just got re-enabled (maybe the KnoppMyth kernel? Anyway, some message along the lines of "APIC disabled by BIOS; re-enabling" flashed by). Weirdly, though, the TV capture failed after this.

Swapped mobo for an Asus and now all seems to be well. Time to sell the Soyo I guess.