Problem: FC3/FC4 on GX620 Pentium D

Question

i can't get either of these to not kernel panic after install. i've even turned off Dual-Core and Speedstep to try to isolate the problem. are you guys doing something special during the install.

magrangeas · Answer

Hy,

Your problem comes from the graphic card. You have to remove it and use the graphic card which is incorporated in the motherboard.

Then, you can install FD4 or any other linux system.

When linux is install, you can plug your graphic card. It's automatically detected. That's all !!!

Sorry for my broken english but I'm french...

five0_4tluv · Answer

uhm, no. there is only 1 video card in this machine, which is the onboard. my problem is with ICH6/7 SATA controllers.

PhilML · Answer

The GX620's are definitely *not* Linux friendly. You're problem is with the SATA controller. What we found was that Fedora Core 3 and Red Hat Enterprise 3 will install, but Fedora 4 won't. With FC3 and RHEL 3 you have to go into th BIOS and change the SATA config to use 'Combined' mode. After some experimentation it seems that anything later than the 2.6.9-1.667 kernel that ships with FC3 will panic with this controller, even in 'Combined' mode. This is true for the latest 2.6.12 kernels for FC3, and the 2.6.11 kernel that ships with FC4 (2.6.11-1.1369). And there's more bad news. The ICH6 based sound subsystem is not recognized by FC3, and so far I have had no luck getting it to work, even after compiling a kernel with the latest driver. While I had really good luck getting Linux to work on a personal laptop I bought from Dell (Inspiron 1200), the GX620 has been a real disappointment.

ushankar · Answer

I've pieced together solutions to getting the SATA (with DMA), video, and sound working on the GX620. Details are at: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~ushankar/linux-dell.html

donkey_darko · Answer

i was kernel panick having problems tring to install FC4 on my dimension 9100 (2x160Gb SATA). in the end i gave up on FC4 and tried SUSE 10 instead. it installed easily and booted without any need for BIOS reconfiguring. why not give it a try?

jcope · Answer

try this. at the boot: prompt on FC4, type some sort of nonsense, like bogfog and hit return. You'll get a messages about a kernel it can't find. Next hit RETURN and the install will go well.

ostevens · Answer

Has anyone tried to install FC5 on this system yet?

taconinja_98684c · Answer

Anaconda and X crash wonderfully with A05 BIOS and the A06 BIOS every time.  No firmware updates from Dell on the ATI card yet.  I haven't tried the drivers on ATI's site yet though.   Haven't tried FC4 or 5, but RHEL ES v.4 and v.3 tolerate the SATA controller.  They just crash with the ATI card.  They run fine if you remove the PCI card and just use the onboard graphics although the resolution isn't that good with the 1707 monitor.   I was using the Pentium HT though...   Don't know if that's the same in your distro but good luck...    Message Edited by taconinja on 03-24-2006 04:01 PM

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Problem: FC3/FC4 on GX620 Pentium D

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