Anyone have 24 Ethernet Interfaces up and running?

RouterOS General
1

Hello,

I am looking for a motherboard capable of P4 2.8GHz or greater with six PCI slots. Currently I have tried the ASUS P4G800 and the AOpen AX4C Max II.

The ASUS motherboard will recognize only three ports of a RB44.
Insert one RB44 and MikroTik recognizes three interfaces.
Insert two RB44 and MikroTik recognizes six interfaces. Etc, etc…

The AOpen motherboard will recognize only one port of a RB44.
Insert one RB44 and MikroTik recognizes one interface.
Insert two RB44 and MikroTik recognizes two interfaces. Etc, etc…


I do have an older motherboard capable of only P4 2GHz running with six RB44’s installed. This motherboard is a discontinued DFI board and I can not find any more. All 24 interfaces work perfectly…just need to find a current motherboard that will work!

Any input would be appreciated!

Brad Belton

2

Are they only different by motherboard? I have seen some poorly designed broken (or too low-power, too green :slight_smile: ) Power Supplies that are just ignoring PCI specs on power consumption so that some cards just do not work. Also maybe it is just a defective unit from ASUS with broken PCI slots (try replacing it?)…

3

Yep, total of three different motherboards have been tested for this project.

First was the ASUS P4G800-V. It only recognizes 3 out of the 4 ports on a RB44.

Second was the DFI NB76-EC. It works perfectly and recognizes all 24 ports with 6 RB44’s loaded. Problem is this board is no longer available and is only capable of a 2GHz CPU.

Third was the AOpen ZX4C Max II. It only recognizes 1 out of 4 ports on a RB44.

All boards were tested with two different brand new power supplies. One was 400watt and the other a micro ATX 270watt. The power supply is only powering the PCI slots, CPU and MikroTik Disk on Module. I feel even 270watts is more than enough for this setup considering there are no drives or other accessories.

What motherboard’s (aside from the DFI NB76-EC) have been tested with multiple RB44’s loaded? I think the devil is in the motherboard chipset type, but I dunno…I’m not a seasoned PC builder by any stretch of the imagination! lol

Many thanks,


Brad Belton

4

Than maybe its BIOS fault? Could you try to compare settings between working and not working ones?

5

I’ve tried adjusting various BOIS settings until blue in the face! lol

I’ve tried default motherboard settings and tried disabling everything including parallel ports, com ports, audio, USB and even the on board LAN interface. Everything except the bare necessities and get same results.

I’ve tried setting the BOIS to reserve the IRQ’s and tried dynamic or auto. Funny thing is with the ASUS board if I reserve the IRQ’s the MikroTik will recognize every port on the RB44, but will give a “flags” error if I try to enable any interface. So, at this point MikroTik “sees” the all the RB44 ports, but I am unable to enable any of them.

Thanks,

Brad Belton

6

i was told, that some pc-boards do lack pci-interrupts, resulting in not all pci-slots beeing addressable.
(i am not the pc-hardware specialist, but it might be a hint)
we are going to test a msi board with six pci-slots.

7

Matthias,

Great! Look forward to seeing how the msi board works. Please keep me posted. When do you plan on testing the msi board?

Sure would be nice if MikroTik would publish a list of known “good” motherboards. I’m sure their engineers could just skim over the specs of various motherboards and provide a list of the ones they find are compatible with the RB44 and MikroTik OS.

In the meantime we as users and MikroTik supporters are left to live a frustrating and expensive “trial & error” life.

Thanks,

Brad Belton

8

today;-)

first results:

6 * Atheros b/g - ok
1 * Atheros a/b/g and 4 * Atheros b/g - only 5 PCI recognized

to be continued…

9

Matthias,

Very cool. Thanks for the feedback. Do you have 6 RB44’s you can try as well? What is the model # of the motherboard you are testing with?

I gave up on the AOpen ZX4C Max II motherboard…guess I’ll make it a gaming machine or something. lol

I have the Asus P4G800-V loaded with 2 RB44’s and one Netgear 10/100. Those three NIC cards along with the onboard 10/100/1000 port gives me 8 usable interfaces. I cannot get the top port on either RB44 to be recognized.

The odd thing is WinBox - Resources - PCI shows all 8 RB44 VIA Technologies interfaces listed as Unknown device (rev: 150), but they do not show up in the WinBox - Interfaces.

Anyway, if you could post the MSI Motherboard part # you are using that would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Brad Belton

10

sorry, but no. i tried some no-name NICs instead, they were shown.

Anyway, if you could post the MSI Motherboard part # you are using that would be greatly appreciated!

http://www.msi-technology.de/produkte/main_idx_view.php?Prod_id=297

11

Hello Matthias,

I’ve looked into the motherboard you suggest and think I found it here:

http://store.yahoo.com/logicalplus/msi86neoinso.html

$73 seems very reasonable, but the odd thing is they list it as a 5PCI, but clearly the picture shows 6PCI slots. Must be a typo…

In the meantime I’m anxiously waiting for John Tully & Normunds to submit the promised motherboard list they know to be compatible with multiple RB44’s.

http://forum.mikrotik.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=867

Again, thanks for all your input on this.

Best,

Brad Belton

12

here is the working board:

13

I cannot thank you enough! I’ve already ordered one from NewEgg to test for myself.

Now the million dollar question: Will these work too?

http://www.trentonprocessors.com/products/backplanes/f_5457.html
http://www.trentonprocessors.com/products/singleboards/f_6240.html

Many Thanks!

Brad Belton