[Tfug] Upgrade motherboard and processor without OS reinstall?

[Harry McGregor]

Glen Pfeiffer wrote:
> I have searched and found conflicting information regarding
> whether or not I can upgrade my motherboard and processor without
> reinstalling my OS. Here are the specs:
>
> Board:     MSI KM2M Combo L
> Processor: AMD Athlon XP 2100+
> OS:        Debian Etch (standard i386 kernel)
>   
You may or may not run into an issue with the initrd that the default
debian installed kernel uses.

Your current initrd image will have drivers for your current IDE chipset
(in your case a Via chipset).

Nick or someone else could come up with a way to regenerate the initrd
before motherboard change to add the new driver, or it might fall back
to a standard ide driver.
> So, what do you think? Can I upgrade without reinstalling? Are
> there any limitations? One piece of info I found said that if I
> stick with the same northbridge, I can probably do it.
>   

Even if you stick to Via you should be fine, and a change to Nvidia
should not be that hard to pull off.

I would recommend an Nvidia integrated board with a Socket AM2, and
Athlon 64 x2

You will also have a video driver change (dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg)
should let you fix that.
> Also, does anyone have a motherboard and processor they will sell
> to me (I always try recycling first)? It would need to be at or
> above the specs of the one listed above.
>   

Keep your old board/chip/memory on hand while doing the change, so you
can go back if needed.  You can also use a knoppix or debian etch boot
cd to boot up, and chroot into the system, and fix things, and then
reboot back on to your hard disk drive.

                                        Harry
> Thanks!
>
> --
> Glen
>
>
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