NF7-S: a few questions..

[loic2003]

ok, I've bought the Abit NF7-S and it's sweet... although there's a couple of things I cannot find answers to:

1) In the startup procedure how can I get the MOBO to skip asking me if I want to set up the raid thing? I've got one SATA HD and don't want to muck around with RAID or anything. If I could disable it from asking that I could shave off maybe 4 or 5 seconds from the bootup time.... (incidentally, when installing XP, I just chucked in the SATA driver floppy, told XP to use drivers from it and selected the middle one... was this correct?!).

2) I have a coolermaster centurion case (very nice: buy coolermaster stuff!) which has audio, USB and firewire sockets on the front. I've connected the USB sockets no problem, but I'm having diifficulties with the other two. The firewire sockets have one of those square plugs on it that simply slide onto the pins of the motherboard just like for USB. The MOBO also came with some firewire ports that work in a similar way and take up a slot on the back of the PC. Thing is, the plug that came with the case seems to have the pins arranged in the mirror-image form of those of the MOBO. ie say wire 1 was blue and wire 2 was green on the mobo plug, the case plug has wire 1 as green, 2 as blue, etc... what's going on here? isn't there a standard way of arranging the cables? is there a fix other than pulling out the cables and rearranging them?

With the audio sockets, the case has small plugs that fit onto the individual pins for the audio gubbins of the mobo, but on the motherboard there seems to be jumpers that short the two pins that I need to put the plugs onto. For those that have the manual, or access to it:

case needs plugs on "front right + & -" for example, but on header: FPIO2 pins 5 and 6 are bridged, etc...

is it safe to remove these bridges or will I lose the audio (I use the on-board audio)?

3) Does anyone have a link to someplace where I can find knowledge of how to setup everything to it's optimal on the motherboard? I'm pretty sure I've got the lot sorted, but sisoft sandra tells me some things are not optimal... such as my HD. i was thinking that this was becuse it's not in a RAID format but I'd like to check....


Thank-you to anyone who can guide me in any way,

-Loic

 

[LesPaul]

I'm pretty sure there is a spot in your BIOS to disabled the RAID so it will stop asking you.. I just did it the other day, but i'm at work and can't check.

I've got a question of my own to add to yours

When my PSU is powered on, my NIC LED's and a red LED on the mobo stay on, even when the PC is powered off.. Is this normal and is there a way to turn this off? I don't remember seeing any bios options about this.. those damn LEDs are BRIGHT and keep me from sleeping at night, lol. Would be nice if i could turn them off without having to switch off my PSU everytime i power off and want to sleep.

 

[loic2003]

When my PSU is powered on, my NIC LED's and a red LED on the mobo stay on, even when the PC is powered off.. Is this normal and is there a way to turn this off? I don't remember seeing any bios options about this.. those damn LEDs are BRIGHT and keep me from sleeping at night, lol. Would be nice if i could turn them off without having to switch off my PSU everytime i power off and want to sleep.

Good question... I want to put a window on the side and have the box on my desk, it would be useful to be able to turn those LED's out at night.

 

[paperfist]

I belive that message comes up because you are using SATA. I never had them message before untill I installed a SATA drive and now I get it. So it seems that SATA & RAID are part of the same thing on this motherboard.

The audio part, if you pull both the jumpers you loose the sound from the rear audio connectors on the motherboard. A few months back I tried to hook up the front sound panel on my case and it works, but I lost sound to the speakers since it uses the back connectors. After searching the Abit forums for a few hours it said that is what happens when you pull the 2 jumpers they have on the motherboard. Pretty silly if you ask me.

The red LED on the motherboard stays on unless you turn off stand by power using the switch on the back of the power supply. It's there to tell you it still has power so you don't take cards out while it's still got juice.

 

[LesPaul]

what about the NIC lights? They stay on too, and they are the ones that are really annoying cause they shine right into my eyes when i'm sleeping.

 

[KaGee]

The only way to eliminate the boot up issue is to disable SATA. If you want to use SATA, sorry ,you have to wait....what 3 0r 5 seconds??

The quick answer to #2 is NO. Each vendor has their own configurations, which is why you get the sockets with the mobo.
Case manufacturers usually supply a pin connector on each separate wire so you can hook up to a variety of mobos. Consult the manual for the NF7 pin assignments. Consult your case mfg for the proper pin designation and connect accordingly. The NF7 manual also tells you what to do about the jumpers.

The following is a great resource for your board: NForcersHQ

Good Luck!

 

[KaGee]

Originally posted by: LesPaul
what about the NIC lights? They stay on too, and they are the ones that are really annoying cause they shine right into my eyes when i'm sleeping.

There is no way to kill the NIC led or the mobo LEDs... that i'm aware of. Geez.. most guys think they are cool. People are spending megabucks to add these whistles and bell to their systems.

 

[paperfist]

Get some electrical (black) tape and cover the LEDs on the NIC.