Asus A7N8X-E Help

[ICeDX]

Hello

I just purchased an ASUS A7N8X-E Motherboard. It uses the nforce 2 Ultra 400 chipset. I was originally going to go for a via based board but my friends told me this one is much better. The only problem i have are with the binary drivers and etc.

What needs to be enabled in the kernel for this board to function properly? If anyone else got it to work it would make me very happy to have a list of stuff that needs to be enabled in the kernel (I'll be using the 2.6 series kernels)

(No i'm not being lazy, I just don't want to disable the wrong stuff)
_________________
It's better to be a Linux noob than a Microsoft tool.

[chickaroo]

basically, you need AMD and nVidia IDE support...
ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support --->
<*> AMD and nVidia IDE support

ACPI and APIC/IO-APIC is a good thing too
Processor type and features --->
[*] Local APIC support on uniprocessors
[*] IO-APIC support on uniprocessors
( and of course Processor family (Athlon/Duron/K7) )

if you plan on using the onboard sound, you'll want this
<*> Intel/SiS/nVidia/AMD/ALi AC97 Controller

and if you use an ATI card, you'll want the agpgart (and of course DRI) otherwise, if you use a nVidia card, you can leave it out because nvidia has it's own AGP drivers.

Character devices --->
<*> /dev/agpgart (AGP Support)
<*> NVIDIA nForce/nForce2 chipset support

Also, nforce2 chipsets have a timer bug, pin0 isn't connected to the timer, so it confuses the kernel... it can sometimes cause problems (mainly time ofsets) so you can add the following to your kernel parameters

acpi_skip_timer_override

[bravo911]

I have the Asus A7N8X-Deluxe, and i am completely unable to get acpi to work. Ulitmately, i'd like for gkrellm2 to be able to report that information on the fly. Gkrellm uses lm_sensors and I just dont see the light at the end of this tunnel. I would like my monitors to go into standby when my machine is idle!

[ICeDX]

Actually. I did most of that stuff. I don't know where to put that acpi timer line. I have pretty much everything working, except sound (i have it, but i can only use one device at a time). There is also a problem with USB. I can't use my thumb drives
_________________
It's better to be a Linux noob than a Microsoft tool.

[bravo911]

I've been digging for information regarding the ACPI support for nforce2 chips, and I havent found squat... I would like to use the features of my board, but ACPI and the Nvidia network card (onboard) are the only components that I havent got working as of yet. I got firewire, usb, usb scanner, usb flash drive, 3com nic (onboard), sound (although hardware mixing still doesn't work right), I unfortunately dont have a pair of SATA drives with which to test the Raid support or even it's basic functionality... (donations will be accepted!). If anyone happens to know what driver I should use for SATA, let me know!

[Smoothhound]

[bravo911]

Well i think that did it. Thanks a ton for that advice! I now am able to start the device and assign an IP, but I havent actually plugged in a cable to test it yet. at least i've made it this far without any errors reported. it's late and i'll leave the testing until tomorrow.

one more thing. I have sweeeet 7piece dolby 6.1/5.1 speakers that i cant get proper functionality from using the onboard sound (no sound from rear lft/rt/ctr speakers) and I've tried everything. I have triple checked the connections and they are all in the proper places, and I have also attempted to use alternate outputs (mic/line-in) using the advanced features in kmix. Still no luck. I'd sure like to watch a DVD in surround sound.

I also got lm_sensors to work properly but i found I had to load the i2c_nforce2 module before attempting to configure lm_sensors and once that module was loaded, the rest of the probing worked fine, however there is a module (smbus-arp) that cannot load, and according to the docs, "if i dont know what it is for i dont need it", and everything seems to function without it. It doesn't appear to be part of the stock kernel... I have yet to find it. see here for my posts regarding this issue

[carsten90]

Well, I can't get the center and rear speakers to work, too.
I use the intel8x0 module... It's very annoying, that I've only two channels
Has anyone got it to work? What can I try?

thanks a lot,
Carsten

[bravo911]

or at least recommend another soundcard to purchase that does actually work... Sometimes linux ticks me off...