A7V setup

[Guest]

I just recently ordered the A7V KT133 board and I am kinda wondering how much trouble it will be configuring this thing. I seen alot of talk about people having problems with it and all.
Another thing is what would be the best Case to get for this board?

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by delusional on 01/28/01 01:56 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Mahimahi]

Hi Delusional,
Well, I just finished my setup on the A7V133 and I must say that I haven't had any problem realy. I still have some questions to ask to the real specialists on this board, but nothing urgent.
The system worked fine from the beginning, it even surpasses all my expectations.
Athlon 1200(unlocked) @ 1263 (133x9.5)
Ram 512 Mb Muskin PC133 @ 147 (2-2-2 set at 7 nano's)
Cooler unit FOP32
Proccessor temp; idle @ roomtemp 23°C = 45°C
................ full load @ roomtemp 23°C = 51°C
Verify that all jumpers on the board are set to "auto", dissable the on board sound (jumpers)
Start for the first time with only the VID-card on the board and then put in the PCI cards one after the other.
My setup is;
Slot 1 empty
Slot 2 empty
Slot 3 SB-Life 5.1
Slot 4 Nic
Slot 5 Scuzzy
Just make sure that you load all the drivers from the CDROM that comes with the board first, update the drivers later when everything runs stable if you which.
Leave the bios settings alone until you're sure that all runs well, if so then adjust.
Just one thing to avoid, dont try to disable the SB16 emulation the way it is explaned in some topics, it will screw your entire system!!!!! I luckily had made a copy of the perfect working partition on CDROM with GHOST so I could restore the mess I made on the fly. Just dissable SB16 in Windows hardwareprofiles
Now that everything is OK I am goin to start building my watercooling system and only after that I am going to do some overclocking.
I have noticed that the room temp has a lot of influence on the processor and Mobo temp. One could say that 1°C augmentation in room temp gives about 2°C rise on the processor temp. So, when the roomtemp rises up to 32°C in summer problems could arrise.
About the case, I use a LIAN LI alu case with a 450Watt power supply, it is rather expensive but realy great.

Roger

:tongue: <font color=blue>ACUNA MATATA?<font color=blue>.. <font color=red>MATATA MATATA!!<font color=red>

 

[lrmv]

I too have just assembled a A7V system with a 1200MHz Thunderbird. I too was scared for it as I read about all those "problems" with the A7V. But I never experienced any of these problems. I just made sure I used quality components like Crucial PC133 CAS2 SDRAM, a good CPU cooler like the FOP32 and a good power supply. Also, before installing ANY software, I flashed the latest bios (1005c). Just make sure you have a boot disk and a disk with the bios and AFLASH utility handy.
I have yet to experience the first system lockup. My previous PC based on the ASUS P5A-B managed to lockup frequently, even right after a clean Windows install!

 

[Guest]

Ok I can sense I am going to have troubles lol. This will be my first mobo installing and all. <<sigh>> lol

 

[toonces]

i posted this on an earlier thread and they seemed to think it was helpful.

i fiddled for a few days trying to get mine set up. here was my step-by-step.

1. put in the cpu, heatsink/fan, and ram on the mobo (make sure the heatsink is absolutely level, if not your cpu can overheat and lock up)
2. put the mobo in your case and plug the power supply and other wires to the mobo.
3. install only the following items (hdd, video card, floppy, cdrom, keyboard, mouse) don' forget to plug the power cords in.
4. your hard drive should be plugged into the blue ide channel (not the udma 100, the normal one) with the cable that has the blue end on it.
5. make sure that you have downloaded bios version 1005a promise drivers build 33, and the bios flash utility aflash.exe. (you can find their locations all over this bb). save bios ver. 1005a and aflash on a floppy disk.
6. turn on the power and when it posts, hit delete and go to the bios screen.
7. go to the boot section and change the sequence so that it boots off the cdrom.
8. save and exit the bios then put in your winX cdrom in the drive and restart.
9. it should boot from the cd. once you have installed the o.s. go back into the bios settings and reset the boot option so it boots from the hard drive. then you want to get the floppy disk that contains the aflash.exe bios utility and bios ver. 1005a file.
10. restart in msdos mode, put the disk in and run aflash.exe. you should save your old bios ver. just in case. the program is pretty straight forward.
11. when it's done you can load the stuff from the asus cd that comes with the motherboard. when you want to load the promise drivers, the cd will instruct you to go to device manager and update the drivers on a "pci mass storage controller"
12. install the build 33 drivers that you downloaded. now 1 file will be missing that is not in the b.33 files. just point the program to the promise drivers on the asus cd and that will be taken care of.
13. then install your video card drivers
14. next you should power down your system and install your sound card in pci slot 3, power on and install drivers.
15. power down, install modem in pci slot4, power on, install drivers.
16. slap your case together and you should be done.

if anyone notices anything missing let me know and i'll edit this.



<font color=red>booyah, grandma, booyah..</font color=red>

 

[Raistlin]

This board is "hela" popular (just watched southpark movie)
so alot of people who dont know what they are doing post alot here for help ... I have this board i had some problems i got em all fixed.
Nough said.
Bored,Certified Tech

 

[Bubba]

relax!
go over to the left of your screen and click on search boards. Search for A7V and read all the results that come up. After doing this you should know everything about the A7V and you will have no problems setting it up. We will help you.

 

[Guest]

toonces, you driving cat...

are you indicating one cannot begin by attaching the drive to the ATA100 port? i haven't set mine up yet, but my assumption was the system could be set (via the bios) to consider this drive as "C:" and boot accordingly.

to the peanut gallery: what have been your experiences with using all the IDE ports available? i have this setup:

- DVD-ROM
- CDR
- ZIP (ATAPI)
- ATA100 HD
- ATA33 HD

That's 5 ATA devices. My current config is the same, minus the ATA100 drive. I plan to install them this way:

ATA100 pri-mas: ATA100 HD
ATA100 pri-slv: <NONE>
ATA100 sec-mas: <NONE>
ATA100 sec-slv: <NONE>
ATA66 pri-mas: ATA33 HD
ATA66 pri-slv: ZIP
ATA66 sec-mas: DVD
ATA66 sec-slv: CDR

My suspicion is that intoducing ANYTHING on the ATA100 bus other than a true ATA100 device will diminish throughput. Any thoughts on this?

<C>

 

[Zenthar]

I think you don't have to plug the HD in normal ATA controler if you intend to run Win9X, but if you want to install Win2K, there is no way around it I think ....

 

[toonces]

finally another snl fan.

the thing is... as i recall, you have to have the promise 100 drivers installed to use that ide slot. therefore you would start on the ata33/66 and once the drivers (a.k.a. the "pci mass storage controller") are loaded you could switch the cable. i may be wrong. i only have a ata66 drive and don't use mine. i got that from somewhere on this forum. if your experience is different let us know.

also i looked at the mobo manual and i don't see any problem with the way that you want to set you system up. you can run two devices off of each ide port.

<font color=red>booyah, grandma, booyah..</font color=red>

 

[Guest]

Yep, I would have to think the port is bootable, otherwise, you couldn't use it as the prinicpal disk in the system.

The big concern at this point is the # of IRQs that will be grabbed by 4 IDE channels. I suppose I could limit it to 3, if I don't use the Secondary ATA100 port. Still, that's quite a chunk of precious real estate! But hey, better the fact they are there to be used... that the choice is mine.

Choice is cool.

<C>