running Fedora Core 6 on Dimension C521

[Matt Wette]

Hello all,

I have recently installed FC6 (dual boot w/ WinXP) on my Dell C521.
This box has an AMD X2 3800+ dual-core processor and ATI X1300 video
card.  I also have 2gig ram, 250gig disk, and 24" widescreen monitor.

I have managed to get the box to be usable.  However, I am experiencing
a few nagging problems.  The original FC6 distribution came with
kernel 2.6.18-1.2798 and I recently installed the newly released
kernel 2.6.18-1.2849.  I am running i686 (not x86_64).

First, I am currently booting w/ no extra arguments.  Under this
boot, I don't get both CPU cores running.  Here is the message in
/var/log/dmesg:

CPU0: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+ stepping 02
SMP alternatives: switching to SMP code
Booting processor 1/1 eip 3000
CPU 1 irqstacks, hard=c07b0000 soft=c0790000
Not responding.
Inquiring remote APIC #1...
... APIC #1 ID: 01000000
... APIC #1 VERSION: 80050010
... APIC #1 SPIV: 000000ff
CPU #1 not responding - cannot use it.
Total of 1 processors activated (4010.53 BogoMIPS).
ENABLING IO-APIC IRQs
..TIMER: vector=0x31 apic1=0 pin1=0 apic2=-1 pin2=-1
..MP-BIOS bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC
...trying to set up timer (IRQ0) through the 8259A ...  failed.
...trying to set up timer as Virtual Wire IRQ... failed.
...trying to set up timer as ExtINT IRQ... works.
Brought up 1 CPUs


With the 2798 kernel, I have been able to get both cores going
by booting with acpi=off.  However, I get mouse freeze after a
while.  With the 2849 kernel, I can't boot acpi=off.  I have
tried "nolapic" and "noapic".  The 2798 kernel would boot but it
did not make a difference.  The 2849 kernel will not even boot
with the no-apic options.

Looking for any suggestions to debug this.

Later,
Matt