# Asus A7N8X Deluxe Instructions

## tek|M

I thought Id post this cause it looks like there are quite a few out there that are having trouble with this board.  I was finally able to get a nearly fully operational system up by using the xfs-sources for the kernel.  I tried gentoo sources and ac-sources with little success.  Then I realized that everything appeared to be working pretty good booting off the 1.4 RC3 livecd.  That cd uses the xfs-sources.  :Smile:  xfs-sources have options for selecting both the chipset for ATA as well as the correct sound driver.

Notables and unresolved:  Serial ATA is only supported by the 2.5.65+ dev kernels.  Right now Im using the onboard 3com nic and havent bothered at all with the Nvidia one.  My wireless ms usb mouse exhibited really weird behavior that I still can figure out.  Every so many seconds it would mysteriously pull up the right click menu on its own (very annoying), and also the wheel wouldnt work.  I had all the correct usb stuff setup in the kernel as well as the XF86Config file being setup correctly.  My only thought is that its a usb 2.0 related prob possibly.  I put my ps/2 intellimouse on it and it works fine.

Let me know if anyone has any questions on this board or if you have any ideas on the usb mouse issue. Lates  :Smile: 

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## shaniac

Strange, I had zero luck with my A7N8X Deluxe until I tried the ac-sources.  (I have a GeForce4 video card and I'm using the nvnet driver, too; my kernel is so tainted I can smell it with the computer turned off!)

Once I got everything working, which takes a while, right?, it's been a fine board.

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## tek|M

I couldnt get the 3com nic working on the ac-sources. But as I said, the livecd worked well, and it uses the xfs-sources.  So I tried em and they were way better than the ac-sources to me.  The xfs kern actually had nforce2 by name listed amonst chipset etc.  I havent bothered with nvnet yet cause i really dont need 2 nics.  The 3com is doing fine.  Sound is good too.

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## RagManX

I'm trying to get my new system going with this board, and I can even boot the RC3 disc.  Trying it with no options, and many combinations of noapic, noscsi, acpi=on, and so on gives no joy.  Sometimes it hard locks, sometimes it gives a kernel panic, sometimes it gives a CRC error.  I'm going to try installing again off a new burn, but I could use some pointers in case the new CD doesn't fix the problem.

RagManX

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## tek|M

When you boot the cd, run    Gentoo nonet

Thats what worked for me.  I would always get the system frozen on the mere booting of the cd.  But running Gentoo nonet corrected that problem and still loaded drivers for and successfully configured the 3com nic (if you got the deluxe board).  After that it was all smooth sailing.  A lot of people keep recommending the ac-sources or gaming sources for the kernel.  I had nothing but trouble with both of those.....but the xfs-sources worked perfect for me and contine to work great.

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## RagManX

I didn't try nonet.  I'll give that a shot when I get home tonight.  I did see in another thread some folks having problems with 1 GB of memory, so I pulled out 512 Meg.  That didn't help.

My plan once I got up and running was to run the latest development kernel.  Been using 2.5.65 on a couple other systems I run, and am real happy with the improved interactive performance of the latest kernel.  Any idea how the 2.5.65 and higher kernels run on the deluxe board?

RagManX

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## tek|M

Ya, I havent had a chance to play with the 2.5.65 kernel yet.  I will try it out on my test box first really soon.  As far as 2.5.65 and the deluxe board, believe it or not those are the only kernels that FULLY support it.  With 2.5.65 even your serial ata is supported  :Smile:   If youre experimenting, let me know how it goes.

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## krondor

Installing Gentoo 1.4 rc3 from stage 1 on ASUS A7N8X and I've tried the Gentoo-sources and the XFS-Sources.  I can't find any nforce2 options in either kernel.  No nvnet modules or the like.  What kernel versions are you running?

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## tek|M

Gentoo sources wont work.  xfs-sources work on the deluxe board.  Im not sure about the nvidia nic though cause i havent bothered to try.  Im using the onboard 3com nic that the deluxe has.  Anyway, make sure your keywords are '~x86' and grab xfs-sources.  They do have options for nforce under ATA and for sound.....under ATA the nforce will has been added to the same line as the AMD Viper chipset, and for sound nforce has been added to the Intel i810 sound line.  If youre not running the deluxe board youre gonna have a fun time trying to get the nvidia nic working ahead of time.  If you have the deluxe its not hard at all.....cause you have the 3com nic working already and you can do an emerge nvidia-nforce later on if you really want nvnet.

My suggestion if you have the Deluxe board, use xfs-sources and youre a winner.  If you have the standard board, I would temporarily install a different nic (3com or intel etc) so you can get a network up and running to emerge nvidia-nforce.  In that case I would still use the xfs-sources, they are the only ones Ive been able to get working perfectly on that board thus far.

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## Wiebel

 *krondor wrote:*   

> Installing Gentoo 1.4 rc3 from stage 1 on ASUS A7N8X and I've tried the Gentoo-sources and the XFS-Sources.  I can't find any nforce2 options in either kernel.  No nvnet modules or the like.  What kernel versions are you running?

 

NIC:

```
emerge nforce-net
```

It's a closed-source module from NVidia so not in any kernel sources 

The version of the kernel doesn't matter.

IDE:

nforce2 IDE Support (only needed for higher UDMA modes) is in the ac-, gs-sources and I think in the gaming-sources (there might be others)

Sound:

The sound is supported by alsa in versions 0.9.0_rc7 or higher. 

```
ALSA_CARDS="intel8x0" ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge alsa-lib alsa-...
```

(don't try with NVIDIAS own patched i8x0 modules they're crap)

Hope it helps

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## RagManX

Well, I got the system booting, and ran the full install.  But I just can't get the board working with the latest development kernel sources (as evidenced here).  Anyone have any suggestions for help on getting this going.  I *realllllly* like the responsiveness of my other systems with the 2.5.65 and higher kernels, but I can't get my A7N8X system running with this kernel.  I can go back to one of the kernels some of you have posted about here, but it's hard giving up the smoother operation of the later dev. kernels.

RagManX

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## ventricle

My new PC is coming next Friday and I have one of these boards, has anyone got a step by step procedure that I could follow in order to get it to work? It appears that I will have quite some trouble with it  :Sad: 

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## tek|M

You shouldnt have much trouble.  Ive got it working with no issues.  I now have it 100% working with exception to serial ata.

Important tips:

when you boot to livecd.....   run  'gentoo nonet' to start the cd boot process....otherwise it can hang.  Also, make sure your cat-5 is plugged into the top most nic on the mobo (3com).  Then just follow the instructions for Gentoo normally.  The kernel is where most of the confusion is.  Ive got everything working on the xfs-sources.  Select AMD Viper under ATA devices and Intel i810 under sound.  Both of those should list the nforce as supported with xfs-sources.  Some ppl say use the ac-sources and others mention the gaming-sources.  I cant vouch for those ones.  I also havent tried the dev kernels, but I hear they are problematic with nforce2 at the moment.

If you want to get the nvidia nic working as well later on....just 'emerge nforce-net', add nvnet to your /etc/modules.autoload, and config eth1 and add to default run level

Hope that helps.

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## ventricle

Thanks for that.

It will be my first attempt at installing Gentoo, so hopefully I don't have too much pain.

I am getting a separate soundblaster 5.1 card and a gf4 ti4800. Do you think having these might cause me problems?

Thanks.

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## tek|M

Those cards shouldnt be a problem.  Ive heard that Audigy cards conflict with nforce2 audio with the gameports....not that big a deal.  I am curious as to why you would want to use an SB Live over the nforce2 audio.  The nforce2 audio is far superior to any SB Live and its free on the mobo.  Only audio that provides better performance than nforce2 is Audigy2 cards.

btw....do you have the A7N8X regular or deluxe board?

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## ventricle

It is the deluxe mboard.

I don't have the machine yet, and could probably cancel the sound card if you think it's not worth getting, i just wasn't sure whether I should have a separate sound card or not! I had problems with onboard sound in my laptop before, so that was the driving factor.

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## nitromullet

ventricle, 

Did you get everything? and get it up and running? I ran across this discussion when I was looking for help with nforce IDE support and was curious if this went well for you and if you had any pointers. I have an audigy card as well that I am no longer using because I am quite happy with the nfroce sound storm audio. Just curious about your experience...

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## taskara

I have asus a7n8x deluxe, and everything works beautifully (except I haven't tried to get spdif working yet)

built from 1.4_rc4 cd

I use gentoo sources 2.4.20-rc3

alsa 0.9.2

xfree 4.3.0-r1

nvidia 43.96

nvnet driver 0256

usb works fine, haven't tried firewire, but it is recognised.

hdparm results are over 500 and 50 mb/sec (hdparm -tT /dev/hda) on nvidia ide.

haven't tried serial ata as I don't have a serial hdd.

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## ventricle

I've managed to get most things working now. 

I haven't tried firewire yet.

Use gentoo-sources with no ACPI, the nvidia driver and alsa sound modules.

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## ajaygautam

Anyone tried 3com net with gentoo-sources, which package do I need to emerge ?

Same request for sound...

Thanks

Ajay

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## ajaygautam

Has anyone tried setting "Processor family" to "AthlonXP(>gc31)"

I did it and ran into all sorts of module dependency issues.

Any ideas ?

Currently my box is set to "Pentium III".

Thanks

Ajay

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## taskara

hmmm I always use "athlon > gcc31" never had a problem with it..

and you can use alsa 0.92 (just emerge the latest one) in your kernel compile SOUND SUPPORT as a MODULE, and nothing else for sound.

when you're configuring alsa, the driver name is "intel8x0"

as for the 3com - I couldn't get it working before, so I just downloaded and used the nvidia drivers.

but that was a while ago.

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## ajaygautam

taskara, if you don't mind, can you please email me your .config file. I would like to diff. Also, what kernel (and version) are you using ?

Thanks

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## taskara

sure.. what's your email addy?

because I was playing with frame buffer, I only have config for vanilla 2.4.20 atm

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## ajaygautam

ajaygautam at yahoo dot com

Thanks a bunch

Ajay

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## GTVincent

 *taskara wrote:*   

> 
> 
> as for the 3com - I couldn't get it working before, so I just downloaded and used the nvidia drivers.
> 
> but that was a while ago.

 

3c59x should do the trick (they do it over here). I've always compiled the nvnet.o module from the kernel sources that I got at nvidia.com. They weren't ready yet to compile with 2.5 kernels, although that may have been fixed with the new drivers that came out just a couple of days ago. Haven't tried it yet.

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## ajaygautam

```

root # modprobe 3c59x

/lib/modules/2.4.19-gentoo-r10/kernel/drivers/net/3c59x.o: init_module: No such device

Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect module parameters, including invalid IO or IRQ parameters.

      You may find more information in syslog or the output from dmesg

/lib/modules/2.4.19-gentoo-r10/kernel/drivers/net/3c59x.o: insmod /lib/modules/2.4.19-gentoo-r10/kernel/drivers/net/3c59x.o failed

/lib/modules/2.4.19-gentoo-r10/kernel/drivers/net/3c59x.o: insmod 3c59x failed

```

Am using standard kernel (gentoo-sources) 2.4.19, I did not install this module seprately, so I am assuming, its code was compiled with kernel...

Any tips / suggestions ? I apologize for not searching anywhere else, but I am kinda running a little short on time...

Ajay

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## taskara

it simply doesn't work.

I had to get a patched driver which I uploaded here

make clean make make install insmod.

otherwise get the nvidia driver if you haven't already, it works fine.

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## ajaygautam

nvidia-net is working fine and I don;t really need the 3com one, thats why I am a little laid back on this. Nentheless, having all components working in the systems gives me a wonderful, clean feeling  :Wink: 

I will download it and give it a try... Thanks for the link.

Ajay

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## ajaygautam

Well, I downloaded that package, did a make clean;make, and manually copied just the 3c* file to /lib/modules/.../kernel/driver/net

```

net # depmod -ae

depmod: *** Unresolved symbols in /lib/modules/2.4.19-gentoo-r10/kernel/drivers/net/3c59x.o

depmod:         acpi_wake

depmod:         acpi_set_pwr_state

depmod:         pci_drv_unregister

depmod:         pci_drv_register

Gandalf net # modprobe 3c59x

/lib/modules/2.4.19-gentoo-r10/kernel/drivers/net/3c59x.o: unresolved symbol acpi_wake

/lib/modules/2.4.19-gentoo-r10/kernel/drivers/net/3c59x.o: unresolved symbol acpi_set_pwr_state

/lib/modules/2.4.19-gentoo-r10/kernel/drivers/net/3c59x.o: unresolved symbol pci_drv_unregister

/lib/modules/2.4.19-gentoo-r10/kernel/drivers/net/3c59x.o: unresolved symbol pci_drv_register

/lib/modules/2.4.19-gentoo-r10/kernel/drivers/net/3c59x.o: insmod /lib/modules/2.4.19-gentoo-r10/kernel/drivers/net/3c59x.o failed

/lib/modules/2.4.19-gentoo-r10/kernel/drivers/net/3c59x.o: insmod 3c59x failed

```

Any suggestions ?

Ajay

----------

## taskara

try this:

untar the file, and then type make clean, make, make install, modprobe pci-scan, modprobe 3c59x and everything should work.

check with ifconfig -a 

add 3c59x to /etc/modules.autoload 

let me know if that doesn't work.

I think the 3com driver in 2.4.20 > works.

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## Wedge_

 *Quote:*   

> I think the 3com driver in 2.4.20 > works.

 

It does, I'm using the latest gentoo-sources atm and it works fine. gaming-sources, ac-sources, and mm-sources also work with it.

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## ajaygautam

taskara, it works now  :Smile:  I copied 3c59x.o and pci-scan.o to ...kernel/drivers/net and did a modprobe 3c59x. It auto loaded pci-scan and ifconfig -a now shows an additional eth entry  :Smile: 

This, I believe, is a temporary short term solution, a long term would be to upgrade the kernel. Actually, I was looking for a valid reason to upgrade my kernel, now I have one  :Smile: 

If it would not have been for Gentoo Forums, I might have moved away from Gentoo long back. You guys rock  :Smile: 

Thanks

Ajay

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## ajaygautam

One more question if you guys don't mind...

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> I'm using the latest gentoo-sources atm and it works fine. gaming-sources, ac-sources, and mm-sources also work with it.
> 
> 

 

I am currently using gentoo-sources mostly because, its the default with gentoo, and because it works fine for me. I use this box as my home desktop, whcih is mostly used for Java / C++ development, mplayer (Anime) and Quake. Quake is the _only_ game that I play. I hardly find time for that also.

Since I am upgrading my kernel anyway, does it make sense to try another kernel.

What differences (positive, negative) have you guys experienced with the other kernels ?

Thanks

Ajay

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## ajaygautam

Hi all...

I upgraded to gentoo-sources 2.4.20-r2, copied .config from the previous version. Made sure there were the required settings and compiled it... now 3c59x works and loads fine.

After booting with it, I re-emerged nvidia-net, kernel and glx (GeForce4) and rebooted.

The problem is that the system boot freezes at Xwindows startup. I can see (text) all services being started, kdm being started, and then the screen goes blank, like it does when its about to boot up windows. Then, system freezes, the screen remains dark. Nothing works: keyboard, net (sshd), nothing.

Any ideas to get 2.4.20 working be really helpful.

FWIW, I was using nvaudio.o compiled long ago, and it is incompatible with 2.4.20, so I made sure, i do not have it in /lib/modules/2.4.20.... Will be upgrading to Alsa soon.

Thanks

Ajay Gautam

Asus A7N8X, Athlon XP 2600+, GeForce4 display

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## delaowen

I am using the nvaudio driver, which is working, but I am not getting any sound from SPDIF. Is anyone using the same driver and have SPDIF working? Does anyone have any suggestions or thoughts on what might be wrong?

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## taskara

delaowen: haven't tried spdif

and ajaygautam: this prob sounds stupid, but where is /usr/src/linux pointing to ?

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## ajaygautam

 *Quote:*   

> this prob sounds stupid, but where is /usr/src/linux pointing to ?

 

I am in 100% agreement with you here  :Smile:  and /usr/src/linux is pointing to the new kernel (2.4.20):

```

agautam $ ll /usr/src/

total 36M

lrwxr-xr-x    1 root     root           22 Apr 26 09:46 linux -> linux-2.4.20-gentoo-r2

drwxr-xr-x   16 root     root         4.0K May  4 00:02 linux-2.4.19-gentoo-r10

drwxr-xr-x   17 root     root         4.0K May  4 00:02 linux-2.4.20-gentoo-r2

drwxr-xr-x    7 root     root         4.0K Feb  5 12:30 pc

```

I did note that if I pass "acpi=off" to the (new 2.4.20) kernel, everything seems to work fine. But my poweroff-on-shutdown does not work...

also, I found that "cdrecord -scanbus" does not return anything. I have a CD-RW and a DVD-Drive. I tried looking onto kernel options for "IDE.." and SCSI, all are equivilant to what I had in 2.4.19 (did a side by side compare). Will look into this later.

Any suggestions for any / all problems above will be highly appreciated.

Thanks

Ajay

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## ventricle

Funny thing, I messed up my partitions badly, so did a full re-install from rc-3. Chose only APM and installed apmd, and everything works OK now (other than the wheel on my mouse). I am using the gaming sources, but the powerdown problem worked with the gs-sources also.

I really don't know what has changed over the last couple of weeks, other than portage now has xfree4.3!

I didn't change anything in the motherboard/bios.

Oh, one option that I did change when building the kernel was to deselect SMP, and not have preemtible kernel.

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## fumtu99

Thought I'd throw in my $0.02: I've got a Deluxe board, myself, and I'm not going to go through ALL the stuff that I tried, trying to get the ethernet connections to work, but there was one thing (the one that worked for me), that I will throw out here: it ain't always the MB or its drivers that are the problem! In my case, whenever I tried to connect to either port w/ my cable modem, I'd get absolutely nowhere trying to connect w/ either onboard port; the only way I could get that modem to work for me was to plug in the old card that I used in my old machine. Using that I was able to make sure that I had the 3c59x driver and the nvnet driver, and both would install properly w/ the gentoo-sources kernel. (I used the 3c59x modules from the kernel source, and "emerge nforce-net" for the NVIDIA port; no problems with installing either one, and modprobe would install them w/ no problems.) Eventually I used Ethereal to look at the port traffic, and I was seeing anything that came into the modem, but nothing that was being sent out (DHCP queries, mainly) seemed to provoke any response from the outside world. This was definitely different from what would happen w/ the old board - DHCP queries would start a dialog, and I'd get an IP assigned to me. From this I figured that the modem was not actually sending anything out from my machine when I sent stuff to it, or that the ISP's servers were ignoring any traffic from me. Looking around on the net, I found items to indicate that at least some cable modems and/or ISPs were "smart" enough to reject MACs other than the one that they remembered connecting to previously, so I tried cycling power on the cable modem... eventually the new port on the MB would start working after doing this - took a while, so I'm guessing that the problem might not be the modem itself, but rather the combination of both it and the ISP. It appears that the modem may only send a "new hardware installed" msg to the ISP when it realizes that it doesn't know the MAC of the port it's connected to, but the ISP doesn't process those msgs very often (I'd guess once an hour), or the modem doesn't respond to (infrequent) queries from the ISP about equipment connected to it unless it doesn't remember the equipment's MAC. At any rate, w/ drivers loaded and by cycling power on the modem both ports worked fine for me, after a while. One more thing to try, when you get to the point of having the drivers installed properly... Can't say whether Firewire, SATA or SPDIF work, since I don't have any of those devices to hook up to yet, but USB is working fine, with no special drivers installed (no 2.0 devices, so I don't know about that, either). I ended up creating a little script to rebuild the modules that would get clobbered every time I rebuil the kernel; all it's got in it is a card-specific ALSA driver emerge and one for the nvnet driver:

emerge nforce-net

env ALSA_CARDS="intel8x0" emerge alsa-driver

Oh, and since I've been fooling around with it, I also put an "emerge iptables" in there. This script helps me not forget to do those steps after a kernel recompile... 

It took several days for me to figure out that my problem wasn't w/ my MB; perhaps this will help someone else taking quite so long. Now I just need to figure out why the CDROM burner runs around 20% slower when connected to the new machine than the old (otherwise MUCH slower) one. Think I'll try using a slower IDE configuration for it, and see if that changes anything - it's not like it NEEDS UltraATA 66....

                                       James

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## taskara

I re-built my system last night (asus a7n8x deluxe ver 2.0).

the ONLY kernel I can get to work atm is vanilla! ARGH...

but it works with acpi ON

and I emerged nforce-net, and use alsa

all other kernels seem to crash when loading firewire controller or usb2 controller or something.. it's very annoying. I'll play some more.

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## ajaygautam

I see a few people are using ALSA with this board. I am using the kernel driver with OSS. I guess its default and thats why I left it in there..

Any benefits you guys can list over OSS drivers ?

Has anyone gotten the other speakers to work. The main speakers are working fine, but there is no output in the socket for rear speakers. Anyone got any ideas ? I am try to get the whole 5.1 and home threater style setup around my box...

Any help will be highly appreciated.

Thanks

Ajay

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## taskara

oss is basic, it doesn't support more than stereo.

there are a million threads on alsa and oss..

check out www.alsa-project.org and see what they say!  :Very Happy: 

alsa supports 5.1 channel, but not spdif I think

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## ventricle

 *Quote:*   

> I re-built my system last night (asus a7n8x deluxe ver 2.0).
> 
> the ONLY kernel I can get to work atm is vanilla! ARGH...
> 
> but it works with acpi ON
> ...

 

I use the gaming sources. However, I haven't (from memory) tried to have firewire support since it was listed as only experimental. Sure I'd love to have it, but I'm getting things working one by one. 

 *Quote:*   

> I see a few people are using ALSA with this board.

 

I have a separate SBLive! soundcard. I use alsa with this, and simply follow the ALSA documentation from the gentoo.org site. It works nicely (I do only have 3 speakers (2 small and a subwoofer)) however, they sound fantastic!

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## taskara

hmm I'd go the onboard sound over a sblive! unless it's an audigy2  :Very Happy: 

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## mog

ok ... this is my hardware setup A7N8X Deluxe, Athlon 2400XP, 1GB RAM DDR 400 and 2 Seagate SATA drives on the Silraid ... now thats were the pain kicks in ... I have prety much everything working on the board except the 3Com NIC.

I am using the ac-sources presently, but after reading this post I thought I might have a look into the xfs-sources as well, however I was greatly dissapointed that they are missing support for the silraid chip that is on the MB ... 

those of you who recommend using xfs rather than ac [and providing u are actually using the raid on the board] ... would anyone be so kind and share their solution for getting the raid to work ...

cheers ...   :Smile: 

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## cylgalad

A very interesting website about Linux on nForce2 (a tiny bit outdated) :

http://home.t-online.de/home/Johannes.Deisenhofer/nforce2linux.html

Basicly, linux-2.4.21 works better than its predecessors.

SATA is detected (modprobe siimage):

```
Jul 17 09:14:13 [kernel] SiI3112 Serial ATA: IDE controller at PCI slot 01:0b.0
```

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## senectus

umm showing my n00bieness here.. 

But did you guys know that Asus have released Linux "all in one" drivers for this board??

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## cylgalad

Yes but it's rpms and it's outdated (1.0-0241 vs 1.0-0261).

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## senectus

The Asus web site says theat they may "look like" they're out dated, they are infact more uptodate than the nvidia site ones.. 

But if you guys are happy with the ones your using..  :Smile:  I'll take your advice..

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## Ivan The Viking

Don't bother with the ASUS driver RPM's.

First, they are outdated by quite a bit. Second, they were compiled with gcc 2.9.x, making them absolutely impossible to get working with a kernel compiled with gcc 3+. Third, you would have to use OSS for sound, which doesn't seem to work correctly in most of the newer games I have been trying.

Shawn

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## Kalin

As several people asked about 5.1 sound on this MB, have a look at the last comment of mine at the moment comment ont the ALSA website for nForce chipset.

http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/doc-php/template.php?company=Nvidia&card=nForce&chip=NM2360&module=intel8x0

It works perfect, but not tested SPDIF.

----------

