Some problems with Asus A8V based system...

[Kohl]

Just put together a new Asus A8V system w/ 3500+ CPU. Ran into some interesting problems.

First off, after putting everything together and proceeding to the grande finale of booting up, I kept getting 'BIOS checksum error' followed by request to reload the BIOS (a8v.rom file) from CD and then power off/on the system, over and over. Occasionally it would get as far as letting me into the BIOS, at which point I could check some settings.
After fearing I got a bum motherboard and speaking with Asus (they suggested reseating the heatsink; potential heat issue which wasn't the problem at all...) I finally tried bumping up the RAM voltage from 'auto' to 2.8v (the highest setting BIOS would allow). That fixed the bootup problem. Apparently the Mushkin '2-2-2 3200 special' RAM I'm using needs that much or the system plain won't boot.

My question with regards to this is that if I try and flash the BIOS to the latest version, I find that it resets the defaults in BIOS and I'm back to square one. Is there any way to hard code the BIOS to this voltage for DDR?


Second question, after finally getting WindowsXP loaded I have one system resource thats apparently not installed properly. I made sure to install the VIA 4-in-1 drivers off the CD and all the other related utilities so I'm not sure what this device is or how critical it is that it's not installed propertly...
>device manager<


Not sure if this is related, but I also noticed under system properties that no CPU or speed rating is listed, and I'm also missing my remote tab which is something else I need to look into...
>system properties<

Thanks in advance!
-Joe

 

[imported_Bunter]

Out of curiosity, what is shown in the SCSI and RAID controllers section of the Device Manager? Should be a VIA and a Promise entry. If you don't have the VIA in particular, that may be your mystery device under System Devices. Just a guess on my part, but the MB has both and the VIA has been a source of many questions out here.

 

[MoobyTheGoldenCalf]

Well, I have an A8V, 3500+ and 1GB of Mushkin 2-2-2 special also.

I am using beta bios 1005.21 and my system is stable at 11x220 (2.42ghz) on stock cooling. I had to bump the ram up to 2.8 and my timings are currently 2-3-2-6 but I'm not done playing around with them yet.

When I first put my system together, I got some slight wierdness (nothing like you are talking about though) at stock 2.5 voltage, but just bumping it up to 2.6 solved it and I then did my windows &amp; app install.

What bios are you trying to install? If you want a working AGP/PCI lock you will need the 1005.21 beta bios. The 1006 bios listed on Asus's website does not have the lock. I don't think there is a way to keep the bios settings after a flash though.

When I first did my install, I enabled the Promise IDE Connecter in the bios (in IDE mode) but didn't have any HD's attatched to it (I put them on later). After windows first booted, I had a missing or disabled device too even though I had the drivers installed. But after I connected a HD to it, it was all good.

Also, did you install the CPU drivers off the CD?

 

[Kohl]

Thanks for the reply. I'm not sure what version of the BIOS I have, but like I mentioned previously I could hardly get the board to boot at the default "auto" voltage setting. I had to bump the voltage to 2.8 before the system was stable. I can't help but think this will become a problem down the road because when I try flashing the BIOS, it resets the settings back to defaults, and then when I boot the system up it again tells me "BIOS Checksum Error" and wants the CD.

I was concerned that perhaps this board just doesn't like that RAM, but since getting Windows up and running I decided to run Prime95 and it ran fine all night long (about 7 hours) without a hitch, so everything seems ok.

I am pretty sure I disabled all of the onboard RAID devices but I will double check that when I get home.

Any idea why the remote tab might be missing in system properties? That's actually a slight annoyance as I sometimes remote to my PC from work to retrieve files and whatnot.

 

[mechBgon]

You might want to hang onto a stick of plain old Crucial PC2100 to throw into the system for BIOS flashing. Obviously you'll want to set the system to use 133MHz/DDR266 when using your "magic feather" stick of PC2100, but it should be fine at 2.5 volts (yeah, famous last words... ).