Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (
More info?)
"Ben Pope" <spam@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<2ggnkgF2jpd8U1@uni-berlin.de>...
> mitchd wrote:
> > Buy ANOTHER board. I purchased this "flagship" board from ASUS and
> > have been VERY unhappy. I have contacted ASUS twice and have not
> > even received a simply reply to my email let alone fix my problems.
> >
> > First I suffered from the revision problem. Reseller advertised
> > 400mhz board, and shipped me the Rev 1 board in an OEM kit.
>
> Sound like either your fault or the fault of the reseller, not Asus.
Actually I learned via the posts that 1.01 is the latest/greatest
version of the A7N8X-E Deluxe card. I contacted ASUS originally for
clarification and they did not reply. Lack of a response is their
fault. Further more their web site mentions a 2.0 version of the
board, again ASUS's fault (website error)
>
> > Worked
> > with the reseller, who then shipped me the retail kit but still a
> > revision 1 board and recommended I upgrade the bios. (us-depot.com)
> > The OEM kit doesn't come with any cables, and there is NO motherboard
> > port for the 1394, you need to have the ASUS cable.
>
> Sound like Your fault for purchasing an OEM board.
To be honest Ben, I could live with an OEM board but I at least wanted
access to all the options I'm buying. Pretty lame ASUS doesn't put a
1394 port off the back of the motherboard. This forces you to lose a
PCI slot to use their piggyback cable in the retail kit. Asus's fault
they don't put a firewire out the back. Frankly I don't run any wires
out the front, so I thought I could live with the OEM kit. Live and
learn, on my part, I didn't think ASUS would waste the PCI real
estate.
>
> > Finally I gave up and settled on the Rev1 333mhz board. Went to ASUS
> > web site and flashed to latest bios 1009.
>
> There is no Bios 1009 for the A7N8X Deluxe
>
> > We'll just went back to
> > check for an updated bios and found out 1009 has been pulled. No
> > mention of why, nor if I should attempt a backlevel.
>
> It was never there... if you have it, email it to me.
You've got to be kidding ??? I double checked my version when I only
found 1008 on the web site. I assumed 1009 was pulled, and then
learned through the newgroups 1010 was pulled too. Life is too short
to go digging through my floppies to email you a version. Funny
though they should go from 1008 to 1010. Gee wiz 1006, 1007, 1008,
1010. All of a sudden they forgot how to count. Most likely it was
on the web for a short time then pulled like 1010 was.
>
> > The reason I was looking for an updated bios was because my sound card
> > which worked perfectly in my old system does not work with this new
> > motherboard. I have tried to get it working under both Linux and
> > Windows, and neither will work. I require an optical input which the
> > onboard sound card does not have. Yes, I disabled all the onboard
> > options, (sound, 1394, nics, etc) and the PCI sound card does not
> > work. The only other card in the system is my Matrox G400 AGP card.
> > XP does not see a hardware conflict of any kind, but the cards from my
> > 700mhz system, don't work in the system.
>
> Sound card?
Update, for a short time I was actually able to get the bios to
correctly detect the cards. My CMedia CM8738 with SPDIF, worked
perfectly including the optical input from my minidisc player by
putting the sound card in the bottom slot. It worked fine for about
20 minutes and then stopped working while I was playing a song. The
funny thing is for the short time it was working, on reboot I actually
saw the RAID configuration prompt for the first time in the boot
sequence. And when XP booted up I was prompted to install the drivers
for the SATA Raid contoller, the Marvel GBit ethernet, and of course
the sound card.
When it stopped working I figured maybe the sound card failed, so I
put it back in my old system, where it performed flawlessly. I then
reset the ASUS system (cleared the CMOS, etc. and tried to get it
working without the PCI sound card installed. It will not work
correctly. Yes with only my AGP Maxtrox G450 card, the flagship ASUS
will not work correctly. The Marvel Gbit and SATA Raid will not work,
in fact I don't even see the F4 Raid prompt in the boot sequence any
more. btw I'm using standard EIDE drives.
So I did some experimenting. I turned off automatic ESCD in the bios
and set it to manual. I reserved IRQ 11 for non PCI devices. However
on boot up the ASUS still takes IRQ 11 for the SATA Raid card.
ASUS needs to put out an updated bios which can correctly allocate
resources.
>
> > The other problem I have is when copying files over the network, the
> > CPU becomes saturated (Altheon 2700). It's either a bad NIC driver or
> > IDE driver. Both provided by ASUS. Very lame ASUS !
>
> Well install the Driver for the nVidia NIC supplied by nVidia and the driver
> for the 3Com NIC supplied by 3Com.
This board is the A7N8X-E Deluxe revision 1.01. It comes with a
Marvel Gbit NIC driver, not a 3Com. Ben don't tell me you are
incorrectly posting info on the A7N8X NOT the A7N8X-E Deluxe as the
subject line reads. Please be careful when you make recommendations
for something you know nothing about, and then flame someone.
http://www.techspot.com/vb/showthread/t-12004.html
>
> > My first ASUS board was for my Pentium 75 many many years ago, which
> > was fantastic. I have worked on hardware for 10 plus years and I am
> > extremely disappointed in this board. ASUS is not what they used to
> > be. If I were to do it over I would probably take a chance on another
> > brand.
>
> It's an excellent board, learn how to configure it.
Thanks for the flame and bogus recommendation. I am a server engineer
for one of the largest Intel server vendors in the world. I've been
configuring cards since the EASA configuration disks back in the days
of Novell 3.12. Do you even know what EASA is without googling it?
Trust me here, ASUS released this board before it was ready. I
wish I made a different purchase. I'm sure it will be a great board
in 6 or 9 months after the bugs are worked out of the bios. Again
maybe the A7N8X you're referring to is a great board, but Wolfgang is
asking about the A7N8X-E Deluxe. Frankly if I didn't thing ASUS could
work out the bugs, I would have ordered another board by now. However
in hind sight it was a bad purchase. I would not recommend anyone buy
it....yet !
>
> > LOOK FOR ANOTHER BOARD ! If ASUS actually stood behind their
> > products and even acknowledged my issues, I would have a different
> > opinion.
>
> Asus support is disappointing at best, but all you need is here.
I've put in request #3 to support. I'll keep everyone posted.
>
> Ben
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