Re: a couple hardware inquiries

[Thera <tvpeterson@xxxxxxxx>]

Wesley Leonard wrote:
> 
> I'm going to be building a couple machines soon and I was wondering if anybody
> has used the Asus A7V motherboard with Linux.  If so, how did it go?  It looks
> like a very impressive piece of hardware: 8 IDE devices (2x dma66/100
> controllers, 2x standard IDE), USB, Scsi firmware (requires additional Asus
> hardware for Scsi controller, though), etc...

Hi Wes, I'm currently building an A7V box, and my biggest problem so far
is 
convincing my old P-90 that I still love it too.

Yes, the A7V is impressive, but before you get *too* excited, 
consider that on the A7V...
PCI 1 is shared with AGP,
PCI 2 is shared w/ ATA/100 controller,
PCI 4 and 5 share with each other as well as USB…
that leaves only slot 3 unshared...not terribly unusual, but here's 
hoping your devices play together nice.
(actually, slot 3 *is* shared, but it's with that seldom-used funny 
little AMR (Advanced Modem Riser) slot just below slot 5)

The Promise ATA/100 controller is also problematic in some cases.
What sound card will you be using ? If SB, I'd recommend slot 3 with 
IRQ 5 reserved for it's 16bit functions. 

There have been problems with the GeForce card getting along with the 
ATA/100 controller. In fact, the ATA/100 controller can act downright 
premenstrual in many various situations. The usual way to work around 
this is to do your install on the ATA/66 then update to kernel 2.4.0, 
making sure to include promise controller support. then just switch HD 
over to the ATA/100 IDE.

Also the A7V dosen't have RAID support, which the ABIT KT7 mobo does, 
if that's important to you. 'Course, with a master and slave on both 
primary and secondary of each of the (66 and 100) IDE banks, you've 
still got plenty of drive capacity with the A7V.
(and I've heard the ABIT has it's own share of quirks too)

I'm a bit confused when you say " Scsi firmware (requires additional 
Asus hardware for Scsi controller, though)" could you please explain ?
You *do* have to work with 2 BIOS's, but the hardware is fully 
integrated. Here's one 'gotcha' to be aware of...The Promise ATA/100 
controller is treated as a SCSI device, so in your BIOS (The main 
Phoenix BIOS) you need to be sure to assign "SCSI/onboard ATA Boot 
Device" ahead of "IDE" in the boot sequence. (as well as setting 
"Onboard ATA device first" to "yes")

If you mean that you need a PCI SCSI card for other SCSI devices ie 
HDs, scanners, CD-RW etc...yes that's true...I didn't know there were 
mobos where it wasn't.

another thing...... COOLING is your Athlon's friend !

There are those who think the A7V is ASUS's worst mistake, and you 
will probably run into the 'battling resources' game (what's new ?).
I'm happy with it so far, but I'm not done with the box yet and 
haven't really pushed it's limits.

'Leaked' information says that ASUS has dropped the Promise 100 
Controller, and will be going with an in-house VIA Controller for future 
boards. ...would seem to imply that they admit it has been problematic.

OK, this is getting a bit too long, and possibly a bit off-topic 
so I'll post my specs and sign off.

Good luck, Wes

System Specs:

MB - ASUS A7V rev. 1.02 
Asus BIOS 1004c
Promise ATA Controller; BIOS 2.01 build 28; Driver 1.6 build 25
900Mhz T-bird @ 1Ghz  
512 M SDRAM
OS - multiple
PS - 300W
ATA/100 Primary Master - IBM 30G ATA/100 
ATA/100 Primary Slave - Maxtor 15G ATA/100
ATA/66 Primary Master - Plextor 8x4x32 CD RW; 
ATA/66 Secondary Master - 52x CD
USB ports unused and disabled 
AGP -  Matrox G400
SB Live Value in PCI slot #3 w/ IRQ 5 reserved
Modem - pending
NIC - 3COM 10/100
Adaptec 2930U SCSI (for scanner only - Epson ES-1200C )