ASRock K8NF4G motherboard, does it work?
 

I have a computer with ASRock K8NF4G-SATA2 motherboard (Socket 754, Micro-ATX). Sound and ethernet don't work. Has ANYONE got sound and/or ethernet with this board, and if so, how?

I'm using MEPIS 3.4.3. (kernel 2.6.15)

Sound:
/proc/asound/devices shows no audio devices
/proc/modules shows no snd- modules loaded.

modprobe snd-intel8x0
loads sound modules, but with no effect - still no audio devices.

Ethernet:
/proc/modules shows the forcedeth module is loaded.
ifconfig shows eth0 "running" and "RX bytes" increments when I try and ping this computer from another on the LAN.

However all pings or other access to or from this computer fail, so it seems the ethernet interface is not working even though it is "Running". (Guarddog firewall is disabled).

The board has Realtek ALC850 on-board audio and Realtek PHY RTL8201CL on-board LAN. The realtek.com.tw site has linux driver downloads, but the Audio driver doesn't compile and the Lan driver (which compiles to r1000.ko) doesn't work when I try it (eth0 doesn't appear in ifconfig).

I've also tried the SuSe 10 Live CD, but again no sound or ethernet. Both work OK when I run WindowsXP though.

lspci shows:
000:00:10.2 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation MCP51 AC97 Audio Controller (rev a2)
000:00:14.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Ethernet Controller (rev al)

ifconfg eth0 includes:
Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00: 13: 8F: 71: 8A: DC
Interrupt: 225 Base address: 0xe000

Can anyone confirm or deny that this board doesn't work with Linux, and so I should throw it away and buy something else? And so, that Socket 754 boards in Micro-ATX format DO work?

Hi there! I have a mobo exactly like yours and I've been strugling with similar issues. My lan runs OK, no sound (ok, if I use an ancient pci card then I get some "sound"). And yes, I'm also running MEPIS 3.4.3.

Hey, how about video? I'm pretty sure I don't have original and correct drivers 'cause 3d-things are about as beautiful as they were on my old 386 in the sweet nineties. And the integrated card shouldn't be too bad. I have checked that using console (the only thing I can do with it...) and the output was that openGL and stuff doesn't run (or whatever).

Lan worked out of the box, it was connected to a modem during installation. Since then it dropped out once, but I got it up and running simply by clicking start eth0 don't remember where(OS center maybe, i'm not writing this message back home). Anyway, that works.

I sure you know about Linux more than I do, and I really feel stupid asking this but, are you sure that onboard lan is enabled in your bios or would it wake up if you'd start it from - I don't remember where?

Maybe this doesn't help, but at least I'm not gonna give up easily 'cause this mobo seems to be ok, and compared to few other distros i have tried out MEPIS feels good.

Good luck and if there will be ANY success, won't you tell it?!

Yes, I've also overcome the sound problem on the ASRock K8NF4G-SATA2 motherboard by using a PCI sound card rather than the on-board audio.

The LAN is interesting. The eth0 appears to be UP but no communication occurs (eg. ping doesn't work). Then I tried installing SUSE 10.1 beta 8 to see whether that worked, and the LAN did work OK (so did sound). Then I re-installed MEPIS 3.4.3 and surprise, the LAN now worked! I powered off the computer and on again - and it still worked. Some time later though it had stopped working again. I'm not sure whether this was because I ran Windows XP (it's set up to dual-boot Windows and MEPIS), or because I ran a SUSE 10 Live CD, but it looks like there's something in the LAN that needs to be setup that perhaps MEPIS isn't doing properly?

Regarding the video display. MEPIS runs OK out of the box. I pressed F3 on the MEPIS Live CD boot screen to select 1280x1024, and that causes MEPIS to install with a 1280x1024 display. Make sure you DON'T tick the "Official Nvidia Driver" option in the MEPIS OS Center. If you do then MEPIS boots into console mode and the desktop fails to start.

Without the Nvidia driver you don't get 3D acceleration. 3D acceleration works with WindowsXP using the windows Nvidia driver (version 8185) that comes on the CD that accompanies the motherboard. The "Official Nvidia Driver" that MEPIS installs is an earlier version (7676 I think), so perhaps that's the problem. I tried to compile the source of the latest driver from nvidia.com (with the linux-headers package) but failed. I didn't see NV44 among Nvidia's list of supported graphics chips for the driver though.

Now I remember that it was after a standard update when LAN stopped working. It just had to be started and set to start at boot up. So i'd say the problem isn't too big.

Because i'm not any gamer I will survive without 3D acceleration. Of course it's still nice if things worked completely like they should be. I tried that "Official Nvidia Driver" -thing earlier and you know what happened.

That's good news if sound and LAN worked with SUSE beta - hopefully (and probably) they will soon work OK with MEPIS also. I don't believe that this mobo wouldn't be too rare. (?)

To get integrated Nvidia ethernet, sound & integrated GeForce 6100 on a mobo like Asrock-K8NF4G-SATA2 it might be necessary to compile latest drivers.
Details on this post