GX280 anyone?

Question

Howdy, Just wondering if anyone has had any luck installing Linux on a GX280. My problem at hand is, that I have tried to install ESX server on desktop PC GX280 (yes I know that is probably my biggest problem of all) but...it seems too handle the GUI fine detects the Broadcom NIC and all, but fails when it has to detect the SATA drive. Now I'm pretty sure that the ESX install uses SUSE linux as it's base, so does anyone know of any SATA drivers for the GX280, does it use the ICH5 Intel drivers for this. I think I have found a site that has them for linux, but I can;t try them out for a couple of days and trying to work ahead if anyone has an answer to this. Many thanks.

Teuniz · Answer

I have installed SuSE Linux 10.0 on a Dell Optiplex GX260 (with SATA-HD) for more than a year and everything is working without a glitch. Very stable. I'm using it as a CAD workstation and for programming. And ofcourse the usual thinks like emailing and surfing the web and writing documents. The reason that I didn't upgrade yet to OpenSUSE 10.2 is because everything just works. We have also a Dell Optiplex GX280. I never installed Linux on it but many times we tried live-cd's with knoppix, Ubuntu and Mandriva and everything worked well.

R1Bandit · Answer

OK. Thanks Teuniz. That is good to know. Can you by chance tell what driver it is using for the SATA controller. The 280 that is. Many thanks.

speedstep · Answer

Linspire seems to work fine on my GX280. Several Live distro's do.
There is an IDE mode that supports legacy or mixed mode or something like that.

Once you set this mode most linux can "See" the hard drive. The other Ugly option is to master a PATA IDE drive on the PATA interface with the cdrom.

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. Memory Controller Hub (rev 04)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. Memory Controller Hub PCI Express Port (rev
04)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. I/O Controller Hub PCI Express Port 0
(rev 03)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. I/O Controller Hub PCI Express Port
1 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corp. I/O Controller Hub USB (rev
03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corp. I/O Controller Hub USB (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. I/O Controller Hub USB (rev 03)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corp. I/O Controller Hub USB (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corp. I/O Controller Hub USB2 (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BA/CA/DB/EB/ER Hub interface to PCI
Bridge (rev d3) 00:1e.2 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. I/O
Controller Hub Audio (rev 03) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. I/O Controller
Hub LPC (rev 03)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. I/O Controller Hub PATA (rev 03)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corp. I/O Controller Hub SATA cc=ide (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corp. I/O Controller Hub SMBus (rev 03)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5751 Gigabit
Ethernet PCI Express (rev 01)

Message Edited by SpeedStep on 03-25-2007 05:35 PM

Teuniz · Answer

I made a mistake in my former message, the comp where I installed SuSE 10.0 is a
Dell GX280, the comp where I tried several live-cd's is a Dell GX620.

Here are the specs of the GX280:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 915G/P/GV/GL/PL/910GL Processor to I/O Controller (rev 04)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 915G/P/GV/GL/PL/910GL PCI Express Root Port (rev 04)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82915G/GV/910GL Express Chipset Family Graphics Controller (rev 04)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation 82915G Express Chipset Family Graphics Controller (rev 04)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev d3)
00:1e.2 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FR (ICH6/ICH6R) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 03)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) IDE Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FW (ICH6/ICH6W) SATA Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5751 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 01)

In the BIOS of the GX280 you can choose a kind of legacy mode for the SATA interface
but you don't need this setting for modern distro's. (choosing the legacymode slow don's the interface)

Like I said everything works well.

Regards.

R1Bandit · Answer

Howdy,   Many thanks to the replies. Sorry for the delay. I will try those drivers mentioned and see how I go. I will also post my result, for further reference incase others decide to dabble with ESX server on PC hardware.   Thanks Again

compmd · Answer

I had Suse 10.1 running without trouble on my GX280. I could run Windows XP Pro under vmware (Suse 10.1 being the host OS) without much trouble as well. However, I had more Windows programs I needed to run on the box, so I switched the setup around and had Windows running as the host OS and various Linux distros (knoppix, dsl, suse, debian) running under vmware. No trouble with those at all.

sandrotan · Answer

It is so satisfying necro-posting to this topic 14 years later. It is end of 2021 and I am using a GX280 SFF. Tiny, only 2 GB RAM. I removed the original 32 bit Celeron D 325J processor and I put a Pentium 4 524 because I needed a 64 bit CPU. I made sure to enable multithread in BIOS (and I can confirm it is slightly faster). I also put in a Radeon 6450 low profile. Besides the original WinXP, I am running Ubuntu 20.04 with no problem and I am using this little beast to stream from Netflix, Amazon Prime plus a number of other streaming services through VPN.

Linux General

GX280 anyone?

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