Hey everyone,
I'm looking into building a new machine. As for the motherboard, I'm
interested in an ASUS 'A8V-VM SE'. Unfortunately, in Googling I've
seen people complain about problems with the board's southbridge.
It's a 'VIA VT8237A'.
I went to kernel.org and started looking through the change logs
wondering if perhaps I'd be able to find something about support being
added to the kernel for this chipset. Lo and behold, I did!
I searched this changelog...
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/ChangeLog-2.6.19
And found the following two snippets that seem to indicate that there
is support in the kernel for this southbridge as of the 2.6.19 kernel.
Snippet 1:
----------------------------------------------------
Author: Rudolf Marek <r.marek@sh.cvut.cz>
Date: Sun Sep 3 22:35:21 2006 +0200
i2c-viapro: Add support for the VT8237A and VT8251
i2c-viapro: Add support for the VT8237A and VT8251
Documentation update included. Compile tested.
----------------------------------------------------
Snippet 2:
----------------------------------------------------
Author: Jay Cliburn <jacliburn@bellsouth.net>
Date: Mon Aug 7 22:08:30 2006 -0500
[PATCH] sata_via: Add SATA support for vt8237a
This patch adds support for the VIA Technologies VT8237A SATA
controller,
used, for example, on the ASUS M2V socket AM2 motherboard.
----------------------------------------------------
Unfortunately, Debian uses the 2.6.18 kernel. I'm somewhat lost from
here. Does anyone have any advice for me?
Even if I can add support for my Southbridge somehow, if the default
Debian kernels don't include support for my Southbridge, then I won't
be able to install Debian, right? Because the installer won't be able
to write to my SATA hard disk.
Anyway, I'm really clueless from here and would appreciate someone
pointing me in the right direction. =)
Thanks!
- GM