Tech Question on new A7V

[Guest]

Hey guys, I finially got it to post!

heh, im on lunch at work and a little spastic about my new machine! I do technical support for Dell Computers and telling people where the start button is on their new P4 1.4Ghz machine got to me.... I had to upgrade from my old Pentium Pro 200.

But dont get me wrong, I did have a Abit BX6 2.0 with a Celery 300A @ 527 Stable... With a VERY EARLY Creative TNT2Ultra Retail that clocks up to 200Mhz Core 222Mhz Mem!

As a sidenote, I killed that motherboard while I was unplugging an IDE cable, static must have blown it to all hell.... so sad...

So anyways I get myself an ASUS A7V, and a duron 750 greentop. My friend tells me he has a Socket A heatsink for me and I put it on, with great difficulty, and for the life of me I cant get it to post.

Find out later it was a Super7 heatsink and it has crushed the processor, DOH! Oh well it could have been more $, I went out and purchased a 800Mhz T-Bird greentop, new 300watt Athlon approved PWS, and a good Socket A heatsink (well... standard heatsink)

It Posts! Thank god the board isnt fried... Wow look at this bios.. Deltree windows, reinstall from cabs. Installed in about 10min that was fun, fastest machine ive personally worked on.

I had to sleep soon, I just wanted the quickest way to a test of homeworld and soldiers of fortune. Installed Detonater drivers 3, I believe.. could be 2 but doubt it.

Reboot, bam windows protection error hehehehehe

Well, my beloved SB AWE64Gold and Authentic USR Sportster 56k are both ISA so no modem access or sound for the moment, but I will here have a PCI piece-o-[-peep-] modem in a few hours to download drivers... And I have to use a Live, but I hate it with a passion! Oh where oh where has my ISA gone?

So where am I now? I need to do a bios update, get the promise drivers, get the 4in1, and cross fingers? hehe

Got a few questions if anybody knows the anwser please post!

#1 TNT2 Does support 4x agp, but I have a very early Creative TNT2Ultra, do I have to do anything special to make sure it doesnt try to do 4x in case it doesnt support it? Or a tweak I can do to make it support it? (Oh and fast writes... should I enable it?)

#2 The ATA100, fat chance but I have to ask, can I raid1(strip) 2 hdd's natively from the promise bios?

#3 Overclockability... I have the Multiplier DIP switches already installed, from Tom's articles I am assuming there are some A7V's with these you have to put in yourself? And if I have them, all I have to do is close all L1 contacts and put it in jumper mode and fly? Or do I need to mess with other L# contacts too?

#4 Voltage Selection, what is the default for a T-Bird 800? And what should I safely crank it too?\

#5 I need tips on bios settings, what usually works, what doesnt.

Oh geez I am forgetting things, but oh well.

Thanks for your time,
Paco

 

[acron1]

Hi Paco,
I have the A7V with a 800Mhz TBird(green) at 1030Mhz stable in Win 98SE and win 2000 Pro.
You dont have to do anything for the 4x AGP to work you should enable fast writes.(just leave AGP steghth to auto)
No you can't use Raid without an additional controller(PCI).

You only have to worry about the L1 contacts to unlock your
processor(be careful).
I think default on this CPU is 1.75V I have mine at 1.85V(Max)
Get the 1005a bios from Asus, set system to optimal, don't disable the second IDE channel even if you don't use it(I had problems with that)
Good luck,
Steve.

 

[Guest]

Acron my thanks, I am getting off work now and im going to give it my best. Wish me luck! I'll post tomorrow with my results

 

[lrmv]

Actually, you *CAN* use raid on the promise controller, but this requires a small modification on the A7V board. I just read that on the internet, if only I could remember where... I'll try to find it back.

 

[Flyboy]

Dang, I saw it too, but for the life of me can't remember where!!! I'll browse a little for it...

 

[Bubba]

Bubba to the rescue
http://www.tweakhardware.com/guide/a7v-raid/

 

[Guest]

Here is the follow up I promised:

I get home, and find out my friend dropped off his modem for me to use to get drivers, but it is an ISA modem too! Bla I had to wait until 9:00am for the computer store to open down the street. (a 2min walk!) Bought myself a lil hardware Topic 56k modem for $50, prolly spent too much but you pay for your instant gratification right?

Bam, Boom, Plug n Play to the recsue slipped it in popped in drivers created my connectoid and im on the net. Download the 4in1, promise 33build, and 1005c bios update(ooh, dangerous?), and newest nvidia build.

Pop in the 4in1, restart, finds devices and installs them, huh cant find agpgart.cat... no where on the disk, for PCI to AGP bridge. Skip file, bla, finish all done. Go into Device Manager, highlight the PCI to AGP bridge, hit the update driver button point it to my disk and it seems to have liked that... dunno if it did anything.

Reboot with new nvidia drivers, Windows Protection Error, hehehe. Well, bios is only 1002 and I hear 1004b may be the better one but as in the ACDC song, "I got big balls!"

Flashes ok, reboot, Invalid Boot Diskette.

Then no more post, bla, take it outta jumpered mode and make sure everything is connected good, and power it on. Thank god, post, and I go into the bios.

Boy did that bios update switch alot of options in there! I had to do alot of work in the boot setup and the advanced configuration. After about 30min of coaxing the bios into normality again and some paranoia, I finially get back into windows again.

Get into windows, it finds drivers, finds my usb. Locks on loading usb drivers. Reboot try again, same thing. 5 Tries later, screw this deltree reinstall with the new bios update.

Heh about 4 lockups and restarts detecting the devices during the install... this did not happen with the 1002 bios. But it did eventually complete and looked ok, beside all the errors I did get windows installed.

4in1 installed, same problem.

Ok, im back, same windows protection error trying to go to 256colors or more. Load promise driver, reboot, it works!

Wow, this thing really does fly, im happy, tested 3d games ohh i am more happy

But now i take my pencil and with my doctor's hand with too much ephedra extract i cover those L1 gaps. Awesome they arnt touching each other, that was hard!

It is a 800 T-Bird.. Lets try 850, boots and runs 3d, 900, 950, 1000, 1050 still working, 1100... no post...

Oh and at 1000Mhz I had to up the voltage to 1.85 and there are still no heat problems.

So I leave it on 1Ghz, very nice, I paid $129 48hours ago for a 1Ghz T-Bird. Thank you AMD!

The SB Live installed flawlessly, I did reserve IRQ5 in the bios for legacy. Installed driver, immediate functionality.. first time that has happened on this machine hehehe

I will try to do the raid controller tweak but I will wait some time before doing it, I need to get an identical hard drive, and no place to store the data I have on my 2 hdd's already to reformat.

Bios options, I have tweaked pretty hard core, I am amazed it actually still works, I am very happy with Asus, Via, Promise, Nvidia, Creative, and Enhanced Memory Systems (EMS)

This hardware combonation does work for anyone wanting to a fast machine:

Asus A7V 1005c
4.6ns EMS HSDRAM
Creative TNT2Ultra Retail
Topic 56K
SB Live Platnum
17.2gb Maxtor 20.0gb Maxtor

thanks for the link and the responces, if anything pops up I will update again.

Paco

 

[Bubba]

I read somewhere that the missing file is normal in the latest 4in1 drivers. They say to just skip it and all will work.
Also, after you flash your bios, you need to load the bios defaults for the new bios to take affect. I'm assuming you did this?