NAS based on Intel DN2800MT

[mozso]

Huh, find one InLine USB 2.0 card reader internal, for MicroSD on ebay, probably a week till gets here. Can't wait to see the NAS up and running:)

 

[mozso]

Edit: Actually, the drives that I connected to the Mini PCIe cards aren't recognized by the BIOS either. They show up in FreeNAS though. Maybe you could try that first?

Ohh, that put's it in a new prospective. Maybe the FreeNAS will see it, the Win 7 install wouldn't.

 

[gcooper]

There's some stuff that we've found at iX that suggests that while it's possible to use more than 4GB on some Atom motherboards that things might work by accident. The only potential method of working things out would be to switch over to PAE, but PAE support in FreeBSD is buggy when dealing with some drivers, etc.

 

[MartinT]

Sorry for the noobish question: What does that imply? I didn't have any issues with 8GB RAM. The reporting tool frequently shows ~6GB in use.

 

[gcooper]

Sorry for the noobish question: What does that imply? I didn't have any issues with 8GB RAM. The reporting tool frequently shows ~6GB in use.

tl;dr: If it's not quoted as working with the supported config, don't expect things to work 100% of the time.

I still haven't gotten word back from my Intel contacts about whether or not it's unofficially supported, but as far as we know the Atom processor supports more than 32-bit word addressing with the MMU (that's the ultimate function that needs to work in order for things to function properly). Whether or not there's an additional MMU in play on the northbridge that supports addressing above 32-bits is another question entirely that I don't know the answer too (I thought the MMU was integrated into the Atom CPU, but I haven't looked at the chipset block diagrams yet).

 

[MartinT]

Interesting. I would be happy to hear what you find. When I researched whether or not 8GB is supported, I found some information here (pdf, pp. 43-45). I don't know if that helps.

Edit: For me it was rather "too complicated; didn't understand" than tl;dr ;)

 

[Daisuke]

There's some stuff that we've found at iX that suggests that while it's possible to use more than 4GB on some Atom motherboards that things might work by accident. The only potential method of working things out would be to switch over to PAE, but PAE support in FreeBSD is buggy when dealing with some drivers, etc.

Thanks for confirming my theory, Garrett. I was wondering also how is it possible to run 8GB on a X7SPA-HF-D525-O mobo, I guess I'm one of the lucky guys. :)
I posted detailed info on my build thread about this issue.