EPOX MF570 SLI AM2 NVIDIA nForce570

I bought this based on a post by Rob J thinking that I could just add noapic to the append line and be all set. Well it didn't really work out that way and I'm stuck.  I fiddled with it last night adding various boot codes and still haven't had any luck.  What is the next step for troubleshooting?  Is there away to log the boot to the flash drive?  Is just hangs and I can't do anything as far a keyboard input is concerned.  Actually, it's more like a loop.  When I press enter it just repeats the same process over and over and over.  I am running the free version of 4.3.3.  I have also tried a version of 4.2 and the beta of 4.4.  I am kind of bummed because I had this running on an nforce2 board with no major booting issues.

Tried 4.2, 4.3, and 4.4 beta with no luck.  Although they all seems to fail/hang at different points.  Any ideas?  Is this the right forum for help?

I apologize, I've been out of touch, just trying to catch up now.  I also see 2 PM's from you, I'm sorry, I haven't been ignoring you.

Mine worked with the noapic option, and as far as I can remember, there were no special BIOS settings.  When I have a chance, I'll check them and let you know how mine are set.

Booting mine without noapic would cause a kernel panic on the console screen, with a helpful message to try with the noapic option.  Is that what you are seeing?  Can you indicate what you are seeing at the console, for the different attempts?

Unfortunately, if it panics on boot, the machine is unresponsive, halted, at least in my experience.  That means there is no way to save anything, except by digital camera pic of the final console screen.

Since you say you can use the Enter key, it must be stopping at a different point.  What is on the screen then?

Thanks for the reply.  I figured something was up.  I reverted back to 4.2 since you said it didn't need the noapic option.  Before I go on I will also say in desperation I also am on syslinux version 3.72. 

4.2 looks like it hangs around Table [DSDT](id 0001) - 1114 Objects with 104 Devices 325 Methods 43 Regions.

I did get the kernel panics with 4.1 and 4.3 that said to go to noapic option.

So as an update still having trouble with the board.  I attempted to get back to the standard config and formatted the card added syslinux version 3.63 and unraid version 4.3.3.  Now I get a "Boot Error" at the post screen and can't get past it.  After an hour of messing with it I put the flash drive back into my nforce2 board and it worked.  This Epox board is giving me fits.

...changed to SanDisk Cruzer and it is booting again but still hanging.  I guess I need to start taking some pictures and see if anyone can help me. I have yet to get to the login screen on this mobo.  Strangely enough though I refreshed my router and it said it grabbed an IP. I got into the web admin for a few minutes but then it hung.  This seems to be a common occurrence.  Even though the boot process appears to be hung it does obtain an IP and I can get in the web admin for a few moments.  Then it drops off the network.

I'm really sorry for the problems, I feel bad that I recommended it.

It is still possible that you got a bad board.  Mine works fine.  That "Table [DSDT]" message is related to ACPI.  Perhaps you need a BIOS update?  I haven't had a chance yet to reboot mine, and get its BIOS version and settings.

I am sorry, I've been really swamped lately.  I currently have around 50 Firefox tabs open, about 2/3rds are unRAID related, to threads I felt I could help in, or had something I wanted to add to the Wiki.  But I've had little time lately, to get on here at all.

By the way, when you use noapic with v4.3.3, what do you get on the console?

Don't feel bad.  I am sure yours is working fine.  I should have done some more research myself I guess.

Currently, on 4.3.3 it is saying something like

BIOS e820---then a bunch of zerson and a 1 followed by more zeros a dash more zeros 1fff more zeros (usable)

I can type it all out if you think it will matter.

Also, it is still exhibiting the same behavior.  It did grab an IP, and I can get in the web gui for a few moments and then it drops the IP address.  However I never did get to tower login prompt from the console.

Do you think I could telnet into the tower and capture a syslog before it drops off the network? Would that help?

Many apologies again, finally got around to rebooting, and checking BIOS version and its settings.  There's a LOT of them, but basically everything I could, I left at default, or turned off, including the peripheral ports, HD audio, and the JMB363 chip (which surprised me, I had completely forgotten I had one).  The BIOS version is Award BIOS 6.00PG from 12/22/2006.  I don't know if this will help in any way, or is too late for you.

If you edit the go script (in the config folder of the flash), you can add a line (midway or at the bottom) that will automatically capture the syslog to the flash, where you will need to rename or copy it elsewhere to avoid having it overwritten each time.  Add the following simple line:

cp /var/log/syslog /boot

Thanks.  I may try that later.  I gave up on that board for now and ordered a GIGABYTE GA-MA74GM-S2 from the other post.  I haven't gotten to fully test it out but it boot on the first try.  That is promising.

I am pretty sure I had many things turned off in the BIOS as it stood.  I think the mobo was OK because I installed windows XP on it and torture tested it.  Perhaps the ranking should be moved down from A- since your experience rocked and mine sucked.  So from what I can tell it is 1 for 2.

I just wanted to report that v4.4.2 fixed the issues I had been having with this board, and I believe were similar to issues nForce users generally were having.  To quote myself here, from the v4.4.2 announcement thread,

There have been a few negative reports about v4.4.2, but all I can say is that it has been great for me.  I have now been running for several weeks with v4.4.2, and before that tested briefly v4.4 final, v4.4.1, and v4.5-beta1, all of which use the 2.6.27.7 kernel, and I have seen absolutely NO drive errors at all, and I have carefully examined the syslogs of every test.  Previously, I had been consistently getting the frozen/timeout exceptions (as I have been seeing infrequently in many others' syslogs), but they are now gone in mine, with the new kernel.

 

Furthermore, I have tested and I have now removed the noapic boot option AND the swncq=0 boot option from my syslinux.cfg, without any errors or issues.  My nForce board required the noapic option as of the v4.1 releases, the v4.3 releases, and the v4.4 beta releases.  The swncq=0 option was required for the v4.4 betas.  Subject to others confirmation, I can now say that nForce boards no longer require any extra boot options for unRAID, and I plan to update the Wiki soon to that effect.