Asus - A7N8XE Deluxe Linux Compatibility & User Opinion
 

Hey All

My current motherboard is crapping out right now...damn MSI motherboards. I was looking at a couple motherboards.

Asus - A7NBXE Deluxe

&

Soyo - KT600 Ultra

I know that the the soyo board supports Linux (says so on the site). But the VIA chipset on the soyo board doesn't support dual channel ddr ram like the nvidia chipset on the asus board does. Has anyone had any problems getting linux to run on the asus board? Any known issues? I can't find anything on google.

Thanks to anyone who replies.

As you can see below I use the A7N8X Deluxe, running SuSe 9. I love this board. Not only does NVidia make linux drivers for it but they actually work quite well. I have no complaints with the motherboard except I wish they would have used a better voice for the post messages, as the one they picked sounds like a replicant Martha Stewart.

i don't recommend the soyo motherboard. because it's lan card was slower.
also, there wouldn't much problems with dual memory, i have two 512mb ddr and have no problem at all.
the sound card will work on asus motherboard or realtek

I've used several ASUS boards, and never had a problem.

That's Cool
 

Thanks Guys!

I'm gonna get the Asus board. I was looking at soyo because I built a computer for my dad with one, I built my mom's computer has one and I built one for my gf that has a soyo board in it and they all haven't had a problem.

I've just picked up a KT600 and planned on installing RedHat 9. The installation seems to go well but after the reboot I get a kernel panic: attempted to kill init! I've searched a little bit and found a couple other people with the same problem. I've tried disableing my onboard ethernet and raid functions all to no avail. I'm sure there is something I'm overlooking but you might keep that in mind before picking up the Soyo.

Why Bother W/ Rh9?
 

Save yourself the trouble and don't install RH9.....they are cutting ALL support in April. Install something else, I love gentoo. I will probably try Slackware when I get tired of gentoo.

why don't you try pass "apic=no" to the boot loader?

I am having trouble with loading sound modules on SuSE 9.0, snd-intel8x0, snd-via82xx and snd-ens1371 all report unknown symbols. I've also not heard the post messages, I have my speakers connected to the normal port, I haven't tried the SPDIF port so far.

you are loading the wrong driver, if you have installed the driver from nvidia.com, you should be loading "nvaudio"

I personally can say this much, it's a good idea to go with MSI because they're a great company. Also, www.newegg.com is much better than Tiger Direct. They ship lightning-fast, and have a huge and well-organized selection.

I recommend either the motherboard my friend has.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...130-419&depa=1

Or the one I use.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...130-418&depa=1

Both have the nforce2 chipset, but my board has SATA RAID, RAID, and a load of other extra goodies. I do recommend those boards a lot though.

On google I found an article that pointed me to http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads, I downloaded and exploded linux_2.4.zip, there is a modules.conf file from which I got the details of what needed to be in /etc/modprobe.conf, after putting that stuff in and changing/deleting a few options, I have full audio using the snd-intel8x0 driver that is part of the 2.6.x kernels, I am on 2.6.5-mm4.

alias char-major-116 snd
alias sound-slot-0 snd-intel8x0
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-11 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss
options snd-intel8x0 id="ICH"

You know I recall there being speech post in my bios on this board, and never heard anything, and until now I never looked back. So there really is speech. Anyway, did you ever get SPDIF to work with SuSE 9.2, using the snd-intel8x0 drivers. My system tells me everything is fine but there is no sound. I tried all the stuff that other sites like nvidia and alsa tell you to do, to redirect sound for a digital setup but nada. I wonder if the regular port work? I have a digital only system so I guess I'll never know.

What has everyone else done, nvidia driver?

the options snd-intel8x0 id="ICH" is new one. I'll have to try that.

I haven't tried using the SPDIF so far.

Although this post is quite old, I'm having problems with the a7n8x-e asus motherboard. Problem is, it never get's very far. I'm running it with the latest bios 1013, with a Sempron 3000+ and 1gig of dual channel ddr400 memory consisting of two matched sticks of 512mb. I've got a 36g Western Digital Raptor drive. I'm curious as to what your configuration is.

What happens is the box starts to boot and will get to various points in the boot process, not always the same. Sometimes I get to the point where it says it's booting the OS, other times it must never boots, but cycles (monitor led goes green then back to yellow...). I've actually seen the cd start to boot a couple of times, but it never get's very far.

I' m keeping an eye on the cpu and mb temps and they seem to be okay, so I don't believe that is the issue. All I can think of is possibly bad memory or a bad board. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks for any feedback.

This question can probably be better answered in another or its own thread, but I take a stab to help you out.

Probably a silly question but have you done any overclocking what so ever? I such a case there could be an instability in the system that could prevent boot up at any time (usaully before any boot screen will appear) By the way for this motherboard, the default bios settings are not very conservative. They are set for performance and not nessacarily stable for all configurations. If you fashed a new bios, its likly that all your previous settings are back to default. I remeber when I flashed to the 1013 bios, I forgot to write down my previous stable settings. Although I was pretty sure I had reset them to the previous ones that I could remeber, the system was not stable. My 2500 was overclocked to 2.15GHz. I can't get it above 1.98 now, but I really didn't care.

Second question: Is all you hardware fairly new, or to the best of your knowledge in working condition prior to this configuration.

Not new:
Which components have worked and which are new. memory and hard drive issues are easy to find, since you can simply swap out ones that don't work with ones that do and determine what the differences are.

If you had a working hardware configuration, get to that point at least and work from there.

If you don't have the spare parts for a working configuration. You might want to try UNDER clocking your processor, provide very conservative timing for memory, and no extras (use bios vga). Then increase your settings to default. if you don't make it to this point you may indeed have something that is faulty. Determining which is fault, is what PC repair people make bank doing, and in 99.9% of cases you just replace it if your fairly certain something is bad, or RMA it if possible. Most manufacturers will not bother to ask whether it is really bad or not and just send you one that they know works.

All new:
Most of the time new hardware either works or doesn't work. Things like stress, heat and accumulation of dust through regular use will develop intermitant failures which are much harder to find. In this case just try to get to the minimum needed to boot, and then add on the extras. With luck one of the added components, will cause a failure, so you can just RMA it. Otherwise good luck, maybe try under clocking stuff, like in the previous procedure, but like I said before usaully new stuff just works or doesn't.

Not overclocking at all. Just trying to get the box to run at the processor's defined settings.

All the hardware is new. That could be good and bad. The motherboard, sata drive, memory is all new. The processor is fairly new, but was working fine in another box for about two weeks.

So, there is a possibility that a new part is bad, likely the motherboard or memory. I don't see the hard drive causing problems, but I could disconnect it and see if that affects the boot problems.

I don't have other memory to swap with and don't have another box that this memory will work in. As noted, the cpu has worked in another mb, so I don't think that is the issue.

I've never had a working configuration for this mb.

I'll give underclocking a try and see if success works it's way to me.

Thanks, other suggestions are certainly welcome.

wanderedinn: Run Memtest86 to test the memory in your box. Memtest86 can be found at http://www.memtest86.com and is included with distributions like FC and Knoppix (see “other options” for both distributions during the CD boot).

If the memory test fails, try rerunning the test while underclocking the system.

As a side note about the Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe motherboard, the digital SPDIF output from this board is absolutely the best sound I have ever heard from a motherboard’s onboard sound. And it supports true 5.1 Dolby Digital (at least under xp), unlike most of the affordable sound cards on the market today, but that’s another story.

I have to agree on this. I just got the sound to work with the nvdia driver (this driver only, snd-intel8x0 never worked) and it is true digital and sounds great.

I was under th impression that he was not even booting so I don't think memtest will help (unless its from a rescue disk, and that if it boots), although he has SuSE 9.3 which the setup by default creates an boot loader selection for memtest.

SCOSWriter: I agree. I anticipate that the first attempt to run memtest86 will fail, which is why I suggested running it underclocked, and I mean really underclocked.

What wanderedinn is describing is what you/I classically see when you overclock too much, which is why you were probably stressing underclocking. I suspect that a new component is overheating/defective. Of course, there are lots of BIOS things that could be off.

I had exactly the same problem, so I googled and found some modified bioses C18e1013_2T.bin, there is also a 1T.bin, but I think the 2T fixed it. In the BIOS, it unlocks some memory timings and I set it to something like 2-2-2 and it's been solid for over a couple of months. On a cheap Asrock mobo, the two sticks of Kingston KVR400X64C3A/512 worked with no hassles, but on this A7N8X-E, it caused me serious grief.
The write up of the problem and what the Bioses do is quite good, although they say they are untested, many other people have found it has got them out of bother.

wanderedinn: One other thing to check. If you can check the various voltages in the BIOS hardware monitor, see if anything is running more than 10% low when you first start, especially the 5V source.

I recently ran into a power supply problem that looked a lot like an overclocking/overheating problem, except that the system would eventually boot after the power supply warmed up, but would then eventually crash for no apparent reason.

I would go for a new Power Supply too!!

So... Is this a good "Linux MOBO"??
WiFi?? Gigabit LAN??? All works??

I thinking about getting one of this for an old Athlon XP +2000 I have around

It has impressive specs, but it's not a very robust board, I've had 2 out of 4 that have died with different problems.

WoW!!

Did you get the WiFi working on Linux??

Figured it out about a two weeks ago, but I've been out of town. Well, slap me in the head, the powersupply on the box was set to 230v, rather then 115v. So, once I spotted this, and switched it, all is well. I can't believe the bloody thing woud even boot before.

So far I'm very pleased with this mb, although I've not had enough time to ring it out. I'm not using the gig network card as of yet, as it's the only thing on my network that is gig. :(

The built in wireless requires some kind of proprietary card, so I'll not likely even go that route.

Thanks for the feedback folks.

What do you mean with proprietery card??

It has a special slot on the mb that you must purchase a card for in order to get the wireless stuff working. It's not like anything I've seen, thus I assume it's proprietary to ASUS. From the mb manual:

The wi-fi slot will support the asus wifi-b module when available.

The wi-fi slot conforms to the IEEE 02.11b/g standard for wireless devices operating in the 2.4 GHz freq. band.

Shows a picture of what appears to be a totally enclosed card mounted in the slot. Has an external antenna connected to the outside of the slot.

Further the docs say there are 5 pci, 1 agp and one wifi slot.