Tyan Thunder K8QE and Linux RHEL 4 Update 3

This board is a tricky board. 4GB RAM and above behave in a weird manner in Linux. It appears that PCI 32bit mapping doesn’t work correctly under Linux.

To allow Linux to work on this hardware without failure (such as kernel crush during startup), you must follow these three simple guidelines:

1. Spread the memory equally near all CPUs. For example, if you have 4GB RAM for the four CPU version (8 cores, in my case), spread the memory 1GB near each CPU.

2. Make sure you set the type of OS to Linux in the BIOS. PCI mapping won’t work otherwise.

3. Do not put PCI 32bit cards in the PCI-X slots. It will render the onboard network cards unusable.