Would you recommend the product? yes | Price you paid?: $91.00 | Rating: 9
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Kernel (uname -r):
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2.6.5 (stock)
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Distribution:
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Slackware 9.1 (with a custom kernel)
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See parent post for specs and cautions.
For the not so faint of heart, the board does work nicely. I've heard that the original bios had some lockup problems, but that seems to have been fixed. I've been running 24/7 for three months without any problems. If you don't mind proprietary drivers (or a good sale is enough to convince you to put up with them), it seems to be a worthwhile board.
The original bios of my board identified itself as A7N8X2.0. I upgraded to bios 1.007 from the asus website last week, but it wasn't necessary or useful.
Here's a breakdown of what works. It was tested with stock kernel 2.6.4 and 2.6.5 on Slackware-9.1.
Sound - Realtek ALC650 chipset - works great with alsa (stock 2.6.4 kernel drivers). I've only tried it in stereo mode, not in surround sound, or whatever silly catch phrase they're using these days.
Lan - Requires either the proprietary driver from nvidia, or the forcedeth kernel module. Nvidia supplies a driver for the 2.4 kernels on their web site. Forcedeth is included in recent 2.6 kernels, and a patch is available for 2.4 kernels. There's also a patch which makes the nvidia proprietary driver work on 2.6 kernels. That's what I'm using at present, but I can't seem to find it online. Hunt around for "nvnet" and "2.6 kernel" and see what you can find. Forcedeth is located at http://www.hailfinger.org/carldani/linux/patches/forcedeth/
USB - Seems to be happy with the stock EHCI and OHCI modules. Only tested at usb-1.0 speeds, because I don't have any usb-2.0 devices.
ATA bridge - works great. Be sure to enable the AMD and nVidia IDE support in the kernel (BLK_DEV_AMD74XX). It will run terribly slow with the default ide drivers.
Video, AGP - works with the stock nvidia-agp kernel module. Turn on agpgart and set nvidia nforce/nforce2 as a module. Both are located in the "character devices" section of the kernel's config options. (If you're planning to run it with an ATI video card, you may have to insure DRI is not turned on.)
Other - some people have complained about random lockups with older versions of this board. I haven't had any trouble.
Will it boot from a USB drive? The bios menu says yes, but I can't seem to make it work using either syslinux or lilo on the mbr of a small flash drive. Could be a problem with my drive - I've only tried one drive and one mb.
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