Re: First desktop motherboard supported by LinuxBIOS: GIGABYTE M57SLI-S4

[Brandon W. Howard]

--- James Simmons <jsimmons@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> --- Brandon W. Howard <brandon_waldgrave@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > The GIGABYTE M57SLI-S4 [1] is the first-ever desktop motherboard
> > supported by a Free & Open Source BIOS, thanks to AMD engineer
> > Yinghai
> > Lu who released GPL-licensed code last month. This
state-of-the-art
> > motherboard is based on the NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI chipset and
AMD's
> > latest Socket AM2. It contains tons of advanced features such as:
> > 
> > Support for AMD Athlon 64 X2, Athlon 64 FX and Athlon 64
processors
> > 2X PCI Express x16 slots
> > 3X PCI Express x1 slots
> > 2X PCI slots
> > 3X 1394a (FireWire) ports
> > 10X USB 2.0
> > 16GB maximum memory
> > SATA RAID
> > 6X SATA 3Gb/s slots.
> > 
> > This motherboard can be obtained today from many retail and online
> > stores [2] and the source code for the BIOS can be downloaded from
> > the
> > LinuxBIOS SVN server [3]. 
> > 
> > This is a huge victory in the quest for a completely Free & Open
> > Source general-purpose computer that enables users to have full
> > control over their own hardware. The Free Software Foundation has
> > made
> > the campaign for a Free BIOS a top priority because it is a key
> > component in the software stack of personal computers [4]. The
need
> > for a Free BIOS is even more pressing since DRM and Treacherous
> > Computing have found their way into some proprietary BIOSes and 
EFI.
> > From a practical perspective, LinuxBIOS removes the need for ugly
> > hacks and workarounds in the kernel that compensate for buggy 
BIOSes
> > ?
> > we can now fix the BIOS ourselves.
> > 
> > I encourage everyone upgrading their desktop computers to consider
> > getting this motherboard or another one that is supported by
> > LinuxBIOS.
> > 
> > -Brandon
> > [1]
> > 
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2287
> > [2] http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813128014

> > [3] http://linuxbios.org/Download_LinuxBIOS
> > [4] http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/free-bios.html
> 
> Quick question. Can this board initialize more than one graphics
> card?

The motherboard has plenty of expansion slots and is SLI-enabled, so
the hardware should support multiple graphics cards. I personally
haven?t tried this, but perhaps someone on the LinuxBIOS mailinglist
(CC?ed) has had experience with such a setup.

BTW: An OpenGraphics card (http://OpenGraphics.org ,
http://TraversalTech.com) will be released pretty soon that will be
fully documented and that will come with an open-source VGA video
BIOS.

-Brandon


 
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