Some notes on setting up my new computer with 64 bit kernel:

AMD A780G/HD3200

Driver in Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) wasn't new enough, had to grab the debs from 8.10. Needed the following: xserver-xorg-video-ati, xserver-xorg-video-mach64, xserver-xorg-video-r128, xserver-xorg-video-radeon. After that it's recognized as a r600 part.

Still no DRI and acceleration. Probably because the in-kernel DRM driver isn't new enough. Tried to upgrade to 8.10's development version, still no dri device. 8.10 was too unstable, reinstalled back to 8.04.

Also no Xv/XVideo, highdef (H.264) video skips frame in mplayer.

SpeedStep/Cool'n Quiet

First of all you need to load kernel module powernow-k8.

Found out that if you added a CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor applet to the panel and do dpkg-reconfigure gnome-applets, it automatically prompts you if you want to setuid the binary. Once I enabled that, I could configure the cpu governor by left clicking it. Too bad I need one applet for each core.

VMWare workstation

Need 32bit userland and the usual vmware-any-any patch. Move away or delete lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1. Got "Version mismatch with vmmon module: expecting 138.0, got 137.0.", found this, reproducing below:

I think you can also do the following (got this from someone on the vmware forums I think).

cd vmware-server-distrib/lib/modules/source/ tar -xvf vmmon.tar vi vmmon-only/include/compat_kernel.h

change the line that says: static inline syscall1(int, compatexit, int, exitcode); to the following by removing two commas: static inline _syscall1(int compatexit, int exit_code);

sudo tar -cvf vmmon.tar vmmon-only/

VM suspended in old 32bit box couldn't be resumed from 64bit, although I am not sure if I am supposed to be able to do that.

Other remarks

The Phenom 9600 I got is probably a b2 revision that suffers from the TLB errata. Apparently all b3 parts' model numbers end in "50" instead of "00". I didn't find out until after I ordered it, but if you want more peace of mind you may want to get the b3 parts. I haven't hit the problem yet, but I haven't really stressed the box either. Found a kernel patch written by an AMD employee.

Once I enabled the ondemand cpu governor, the cracking noise from the onboard audio on ECS A780GM-A motherboard almost disappeared, even when the cores are in full frequency.

I wrote this after I've set everything up, so it's possible that I missed some stuff.