Intel DP965LT

thanks

Big thank you to G. Joe Ryan for making this one possible.

system

Intel DP965LT mobo with Core 2 Duo E6400 CPU, 128MB nVidia GeForce 6200 graphics card, and 1GB main memory. Two SATA hard drives, 120GB & 160GB, and PATA DVD burner plus a CDROM.

BIOS settings

The mobo BIOS is set to using native IDE, not AHCI, this allows multi boot with WinXP plus openSUSE, slackware, bluewhite64, slamd64 and others.

IDE cdrom

The CDROM IDE interface requires the pata_marvell driver that appeared in linux kernel 2.6.20. Also select SCSI CDROM so the device appears as /dev/sr0.

network

Disabled the onboard NIC since it fails to negotiate a 100Mbps link with the switch. Using a PCI Intel pro/100 NIC instead.

sound

The onboard sound codec requires the snd_hda_intel driver.
Use alsaconf to setup the hardware
Use alsamixer to unmute 'Front' (alsamixer requires 2.6.19 or later kernel)
Use 'alsactl store' to save the working sound settings

gotchas updated 2007-04-11

knoppix 5.1.1

cannot see the DVD

fedora core 6

disappointing

openSUSE-10.2

sound: alsamixer doesn't work with 2.6.18.x kernel, but the GUI volume control and mixer work, solved with updated kernel

bluewhite64-11.0, bluewhite64-current

require booting with the test26.s kernel in order to see the hard drives
cannot see the install DVD thus require an install from hard drive
compile a 2.6.20 or later kernel to access a DVD/CDROM on the PATA interface, this also fixes alsamixer issue
can't run a guest VM in vmware 6.0beta, cause unknown

sflack-11.0

cannot see the install DVD thus require an install from hard drive
nVidia driver doesn't install / work
missing library issue, can't run vmware 5.5.3

slackware-11.0

require booting with the test26.s kernel in order to see the hard drives
cannot see the install DVD thus require an install from hard drive
compile a 2.6.20 or later kernel to access a DVD/CDROM on the PATA interface, this also fixes alsamixer issue

slamd64-11.0, slamd64-current

cannot see the install DVD thus requires an install from hard drive
doesn't run NFS properly, fixed in -current
compile a 2.6.20 or later kernel to access a DVD/CDROM on the PATA interface, this also fixes alsamixer issue

systemrescuecd-x86-0.3.3

cannot see the CDROM, runs okay from USB stick

kernel

linux 2.4 series

2.4.34.1 cannot see the hard drives.

linux 2.6 series

For information about tested kernels' config and dmesg, see the silly page. The DP965LT requires at least 2.6.20 kernel for access to the DVD/CDROM (openSUSE backported the pata_marvell driver to their 2.6.18... kernel).

disclaimer

Information presented on this page is subject to change as the author's knowledge and understanding of the hardware and software improves. Additions and corrections welcome.