The Shuttle PC K4500 had a lot of unfamiliar hardware on it when I first bought it. The most critical part being the SATA drivers.

00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR/GH (ICH7 Family) SATA IDE Controller (rev 01)

The pertinent option in menuconfig was to enable “Intel ESB, ICH, PIIX3, PIIX4 PATA/SATA Support” in the SATA drivers section. Important! In order for the kernel to boot, this driver must be built in or you won’t be able to mount your filesystems.

Networking is another critical component since I do nearly all of my work over SSH.

02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8056 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 12)

The driver is called sky2. The entry in menuconfig is “SysKonnect Yukon2 support”. You have the choice to either build the driver in or modularize it. I should say that when I’m building a new config I execute “make defconfig” to create a base config that I edit later. So there might be other critical options that I don’t mention because they are enabled by default in defconfig.

Moving right along, I installed lm_sensors and put the effort in to correct the readings I was getting. I wrote down the readings from my BIOS and matched up those with identical readings from lm_sensors. Then I stole the equations from the it8716 section of sensors.conf. In the end, I only have one sensor which is unlabeled. It is probably -5v but the equation from it8716 doesn’t figure to be close to -5v so it must be disconnected.

Contents of /etc/sensors.conf

chip “it8718-isa-*”

label in0 “DDR2″
label in1 “-12v”
label in2 “+3.3v”
label in3 “+12v”
label in4 “+5 VSB”
label in5 “Chipset”
label in6 “CPU”
label in8 “MB Batt”
label fan1 “CPU Fan”
label temp1 “Case Temp”
label temp2 “CPU Temp”
label vid “CPU volt”

compute in1  (1+232/56)*@ – 4.096*232/56 , (@ + 4.096*232/56)/(1+232/56)
compute in3 ((30/10)+1)*@ , @/((30/10)+1)
compute in4 ((6.8/10)+1)*@ , @/((6.8/10)+1)

set in0_min 1.8 * 0.95
set in0_max 1.8 * 1.05
set in1_max  -12 * 0.95
set in1_min  -12 * 1.05
set in2_min 3.3 * 0.95
set in2_max 3.3 * 1.05
set in3_min 12 * 0.95
set in3_max 12 * 1.05
set in4_min 5 * 0.95
set in4_max 5 * 1.05
set in5_min 1.5 * 0.95
set in5_max 1.5 * 1.05
set in6_min 1.2 * 0.95
set in6_max 1.2 * 1.05
set temp1_low 40
set temp1_over 70
set temp2_low 40
set temp2_over 70
set fan1_min 1400

ignore fan2
ignore fan3
ignore temp3
ignore in7

Output of “sensors”

ebrake@scanner ~ $ sensors
it8718-isa-0290
Adapter: ISA adapter
DDR2:      +1.82 V  (min =  +1.71 V, max =  +1.89 V)
-12v:     -12.03 V  (min = -12.61 V, max = -11.37 V)
+3.3v:     +3.28 V  (min =  +3.14 V, max =  +3.47 V)
+12v:     +11.84 V  (min = +11.39 V, max = +12.61 V)
+5 VSB:    +5.16 V  (min =  +4.76 V, max =  +5.24 V)
Chipset:   +1.52 V  (min =  +1.42 V, max =  +1.57 V)
CPU:       +1.25 V  (min =  +1.14 V, max =  +1.26 V)
MB Batt:   +3.26 V
CPU Fan:  1638 RPM  (min = 1400 RPM)
Case Temp:   +57 C  (low  =   +40 C, high =   +70 C)   sensor = thermistor
CPU Temp:    +52 C  (low  =   +40 C, high =   +70 C)   sensor = diode
CPU volt: +2.050 V

Just for fun here is the SMBus version from lspci

00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 01)

The Shuttle PC arrived today! At this moment, I’m doing the Gentoo install. The first issue I had to figure out was the exact sequence to make the machine boot from my usb key. Pressing Escape during post brings up a screen to change the first boot device.

LS120
Hard Disk
CD-ROM
ZIP100
USB-FDD
USB-ZIP
USB-CDROM
LAN

None these options worked, however. The correct option was found buried deeper in the BIOS options.

1. Boot the Shuttle PC with the thumb drive plugged in and press delete during POST to enter setup.
2. Select Integrated Peripherals
3. Select USB Device Setting
4. Under the “USB Mass Storage Device Boot Setting” section there will be an entry for the USB thumb drive.

For my thumb drive I had three choices “auto”, “FDD only”, and “HDD only”. Choosing “HDD only” causes my thumb drive to show up as a standard hard disk in my boot options.