Inheriting a retired fileserver

[m0dman]

As the title states, I am going to be inheriting a retired file server. While I'll have to actually get it to take a look to see what hardware is in the rig, I do know the mobo and cpu's the machine is using.

 

Motherboard: Asus A7M266-D (Dual socket A)

Chipset: AMD 760MPX

Processor: AMD Athlon 2400+ (x2)

 

Naturally I did a search for the chipset before posting but there were no results, and of course the HCL doesn't include any entries for hardware this old.

 

This is to the AMD experts out there, I consider myself to be a fairly ingenious fellow however when it comes to making hardware work with software at the most basic of levels I get severely lost. Is there any release currently out there (I am guessing I would need an EFI method of install) that will work with this chipset?

 

Any information you have would be great, thanks in advance!

[MaaseyRacer]

I think only certain 939 AM2 and AM2+ boards and chipsets are supported. Unless someone else knows otherwise, I looked into this a while back and came up empty handed.

[realityiswhere]

If it's an

 

AMD Athlon XP "Thoroughbred A/B" (Model 8, 130 nm)
CPU-ID: 6-8-0 (A), 6-8-1 (B)
All models support: MMX, SSE, Enhanced 3DNow!

 

As wikipedia says the 2400+ is, you're out of luck.

 

OS X needs at the VERY least SSE2 instruction sets in order to be installed on bare metal, anything less than that will require virtualization or nothing.

 

If you can find out exactly which model AMD it is, that would be helpful (Athlon, Athlon 64, XP, Sempron.. etc)

[m0dman]

This is the output from the guy who owns the FS now (it currently has Gentoo linux installed)

 

infocalypse ~ # cat /proc/cpuinfo

processor : 0

vendor_id : AuthenticAMD

cpu family : 6

model : 8

model name : AMD Athlon MP 2400+

stepping : 1

cpu MHz : 2000.144

cache size : 256 KB

fdiv_bug : no

hlt_bug : no

f00f_bug : no

coma_bug : no

fpu : yes

fpu_exception : yes

cpuid level : 1

wp : yes

flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse syscall mp mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow ts

bogomips : 4004.59

clflush size : 32

 

processor : 1

vendor_id : AuthenticAMD

cpu family : 6

model : 8

model name : AMD Athlon MP 2400+

stepping : 1

cpu MHz : 2000.144

cache size : 256 KB

fdiv_bug : no

hlt_bug : no

f00f_bug : no

coma_bug : no

fpu : yes

fpu_exception : yes

cpuid level : 1

wp : yes

flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse syscall mp mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow ts

bogomips : 4000.53

clflush size : 32

 

infocalypse ~ # free -m

total used free shared buffers cached

Mem: 3041 3000 41 0 19 2600

-/+ buffers/cache: 380 2661

Swap: 0 0 0

 

 

if you need more info let me know

[realityiswhere]

It can't do OS X.

 

This list:

 

fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse syscall mp mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow ts

 

is the cpu instruction sets it supports, SSE2 is not in that list, and ideally the proc would support SSE3 for best performance.

 

That machine will not run OSx86 unless it is virtualized on top of another OS.

[m0dman]

thanks for the info reality, that was my initial suspicion based on the googling i did before hand, just wanted a definate opinion before i moved into another direction