ECS K7S5A

[guy]

Greets all:
I'm toying with the possibility of building a machine with more power than my long in the tooth 500mhz Celeron. If I follow through it will be on a tight budget though. With this in mind I was looking at the ECS K7S5A as the base of my system because they seem to be dirt cheap, have lots of integrated components and can use (cheaper) SDRAM. The one question that I still cannot adequately answer, however, is wether the onboard components will run with FreeBSD. If anyone has any experience with this mobo could you please pass on your experience? Thanks in advance . . .

[Strog]

I've heard some people complain about performance with the SIS chipset in FreeBSD and in general but doesn't seem to be a deal breaker.

The problem with AC '97 audio is that it is a spec more than a chipset so everyone has a slightly different way to implement it. I've generally had good success with AC '97 audio when I deal with it but you might have to tweak a little to get it working. Some like to work if compiled into the kernel while others prefer to be loaded as a module for best results. The c-media ones seem to work fine usually.

The SIS900 network card has given FreeBSD users fits for a while but seems to be working now with 4.8 and 5.1. I've talked to a couple people and they say it is working fine for them. Don't even think about it if you aren't going to use at least 4.8/5.1.

Also be careful about the size of your heatsink since there isn't a lot of clearance around the cpu socket. A little googling should turn up what people have found to fit on that board.

Yeah, it is pretty cheap and probably will do what you want. I tend to spend a little more but I'm kinda of picky about hardware. This still should be a good upgrade over a Celeron 500.

[bsdjunkie]

Ive had trouble with the AC97 audio in linux, but never tried it in *BSD.
As to the SIS network, i know it works fine in openbsd, but you will not get the performance of a good 3com or intel nic.

[frisco]

Ive had trouble with the AC97 audio in linux, but never tried it in *BSD.


I've used a variety of ac97 in OpenBSD w/o a problem, but none have been the "C-Media CMI9738/4CH AC'97 CODEC" that's listed on the K7S5A.

From the looks of http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/dev/sound/pcm/ac97.c it seems that support for CMI9738 was added to FreeBSD in February and is in -current and 5.1.

[guy]

Thanks for the heads up guys. I guess the concensus is that the board (and its components) will probably work but may require some tweaking. From everything I've read it sounds liike the K7S5A could either be a great bargain or a terrible nightmare. It's interesting how even after all the negatives (compared to a lot of other boards by major manufacturers) that seem to be attributed to the K7S5A still seems to be doing quite well on the market if availablility at local computer stores is any indication.

[thedude]

I've built 2 computers w/ this board and liked it a lot. Only problem I had was finding BIOS updates

[bsdmetfan]

I also use the MB and Athlon-XP 1700+ with FreeBSD-5.1 and it works well; I have the on-board sound card disabled, since I use another one (PCI), but the SiS900 works O.K. w/o problems. The only problem with the MB and FreeBSD 5.1 is that /dev/fd0 does not work when the APCI mode is turned on in kernel; but this is a great problem not only for ECS MB users, but many users of great variety of MBs (even expensive ones).
Kuba.

[guy]

The only problem with the MB and FreeBSD 5.1 is that /dev/fd0 does not work when the APCI mode is turned on in kernel; but this is a great problem not only for ECS MB users, but many users of great variety of MBs (even expensive ones).
Kuba.

Thanks man. That explains why there was no /dev/fd0 when I first tried Freesbie. Problem solved.