Mailing List Archive: Asus A7N266-VM

Asus A7N266-VM

Mar 16, 2003, 5:40 PM

Post #1 of 11 (3822 views)

I notice there are a couple of people (Jason James, Cedar McKay, mojo (Joe)
et al) out there using this board (and probably more using the nForce
chipset).

I just bought one of these and an XP2000+ to work with my already owned
Pinnacle PCTV. In general it works fine and quite stable except for a few
annoyances. First was GRUB...easy fix (lilo), haven't tried USB, but then:

1) I can't seem to get the nForce sound running full duplex. I am running
ALSA and using the example modules.conf from the ALSA page. I keep getting
errors like unable to open /dev/dsp. fuser shows no processes with it open
in general. It's as if it is opened for output and then MythTV tries to open
it for input. In the interim I have added a cheapo Yamaha YMF724 (also with
ALSA) as /dev/dsp1 and it works OK, although I'd like to get that PCI slot
back. Ideas? From the sounds of things Cedar has it working OK... Any tricks
to getting it working?

I'm getting nasty sound glitches on channel changes too although I'm
currently blaming them on the PCTV

2) If I try to use the onboard video (GF2 MX like) with the current (as of
about last week) Nvidia binaries, I can't even get xawtv to work. Running it
generally causes an instant reboot/reset of the board. MythTV is equally
unsuccessful although it doesn't cause a reboot. Plugging in a GF4 MX 440 in
the AGP and disabling the on board video and everything works about as good
as you could expect.

Anyone have similar problems? I'm running a brand new install of Redhat 8.0
(stock 2.4.18 kernel) and am using twm as my window manager for it's
lightweightness... Using twm generally gets around the problems of KDE
taking over the sound device etc. I am also using the nforce drivers nvnet
(but not nvaudio since ALSA)

I see mention of a "TVOUT card" for the Asus A7N266-VM and the BIOS allows
you to set up the default video output format. Has anyone investigated
further to see if these things actually exist? If so, I could get away
without an extra video card.

I'm nearly there....

TIA for any advice you guys might have.

Christian

Re: Asus A7N266-VM [ In reply to ]

cedarmckay at mac

Mar 16, 2003, 6:28 PM

Post #2 of 11 (3764 views)

Permalink

>
> 1) I can't seem to get the nForce sound running full duplex. I am
> running
> ALSA and using the example modules.conf from the ALSA page. I keep
> getting
> errors like unable to open /dev/dsp. fuser shows no processes with it
> open
> in general. It's as if it is opened for output and then MythTV tries
> to open
> it for input. In the interim I have added a cheapo Yamaha YMF724 (also
> with
> ALSA) as /dev/dsp1 and it works OK, although I'd like to get that PCI
> slot
> back. Ideas? From the sounds of things Cedar has it working OK... Any
> tricks
> to getting it working?
>
The alsa install went very smoothly for me. You might look at the
setting up alsa and Red Hat section of the docs at www.mythtv.org
because I wrote them based on my experience getting alsa going on this
board and red hat. Below is the relevant section of my modules.conf. It
is embarrassingly unorganized, and some may not be "correct" but it
works for me!

################# lirc
alias char-major-61 lirc_serial
################################
alias parport_lowlevel parport_pc
alias usb-controller usb-ohci

################### alsa
alias char-major-116 snd
alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0
# module options should go here
# OSS/Free portion
alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
# card #1
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss
###################
alias char-major-81 bttv
alias char-major-195 nvidia

post-install sound-slot-0 /bin/aumix-minimal -f /etc/.aumixrc -L
>/dev/null 2>&1 || :
pre-remove sound-slot-0 /bin/aumix-minimal -f /etc/.aumixrc -S
>/dev/null 2>&1 || :
post-install sound-slot-1 /bin/aumix-minimal -f /etc/.aumixrc -L
>/dev/null 2>&1 || :
pre-remove sound-slot-1 /bin/aumix-minimal -f /etc/.aumixrc -S
>/dev/null 2>&1 || :

alias eth0 nvnet
alias sound-slot-1 nvaudio
alias usb-interface usb-ohci

>
> 2) If I try to use the onboard video (GF2 MX like) with the current
> (as of
> about last week) Nvidia binaries, I can't even get xawtv to work.
> Running it
> generally causes an instant reboot/reset of the board. MythTV is
> equally
> unsuccessful although it doesn't cause a reboot. Plugging in a GF4 MX
> 440 in
> the AGP and disabling the on board video and everything works about as
> good
> as you could expect.
>
To get this board working I first built fresh rpms (because I was using
an updated kernel) like this:

as root:

# rpmbuild --rebuild source_rpm_name_here

then pay attention to the last few lines of the build process. That
will tell you the path to the output binary rpm. Usually something like
/usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/

go there.

make sure you don't have a previous version of that rpm installed

# rpm -e binary_rpm_name_here

then install your freshly compiled rpm

# rpm -i new_binary_rpm_filename_here

I installed the nforce platform combo drivers, the nvidia kernel driver
and the glx package.

I also commented out the line
Load "dri"

and changed

Driver "nv"

to read

Driver "nvidia"

in /etc/X11/XF86Config

finally it tuned off usb legacy support in the bios to get usb working.
now everything on that board works perfectly.

Best of luck,
cedar

> Anyone have similar problems? I'm running a brand new install of
> Redhat 8.0
> (stock 2.4.18 kernel) and am using twm as my window manager for it's
> lightweightness... Using twm generally gets around the problems of KDE
> taking over the sound device etc. I am also using the nforce drivers
> nvnet
> (but not nvaudio since ALSA)
>
> I see mention of a "TVOUT card" for the Asus A7N266-VM and the BIOS
> allows
> you to set up the default video output format. Has anyone investigated
> further to see if these things actually exist? If so, I could get away
> without an extra video card.
>
> I'm nearly there....
>
> TIA for any advice you guys might have.
>
>
> Christian
>
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users@snowman.net
> http://www.snowman.net/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users

RE: Asus A7N266-VM [ In reply to ]

christianh at pdd

Mar 16, 2003, 6:53 PM

Post #3 of 11 (3769 views)

Permalink

See my comments below:

> >
> > 1) I can't seem to get the nForce sound running full duplex. I am
> > running
> > ALSA and using the example modules.conf from the ALSA page. I keep
> > getting
> > errors like unable to open /dev/dsp. fuser shows no processes with it
> > open
> > in general. It's as if it is opened for output and then MythTV tries
> > to open
> > it for input. In the interim I have added a cheapo Yamaha YMF724 (also
> > with
> > ALSA) as /dev/dsp1 and it works OK, although I'd like to get that PCI
> > slot
> > back. Ideas? From the sounds of things Cedar has it working OK... Any
> > tricks
> > to getting it working?
> >
> The alsa install went very smoothly for me. You might look at the
> setting up alsa and Red Hat section of the docs at www.mythtv.org
> because I wrote them based on my experience getting alsa going on this
> board and red hat. Below is the relevant section of my modules.conf. It
> is embarrassingly unorganized, and some may not be "correct" but it
> works for me!
>
>
> ################# lirc
> alias char-major-61 lirc_serial
> ################################
> alias parport_lowlevel parport_pc
> alias usb-controller usb-ohci
>
> ################### alsa
> alias char-major-116 snd
> alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0
> # module options should go here
> # OSS/Free portion
> alias char-major-14 soundcore
> alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
> # card #1
> alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
> alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
> alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
> alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
> alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss
> ###################
> alias char-major-81 bttv
> alias char-major-195 nvidia
>
>
>
> post-install sound-slot-0 /bin/aumix-minimal -f /etc/.aumixrc -L
> >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
> pre-remove sound-slot-0 /bin/aumix-minimal -f /etc/.aumixrc -S
> >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
> post-install sound-slot-1 /bin/aumix-minimal -f /etc/.aumixrc -L
> >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
> pre-remove sound-slot-1 /bin/aumix-minimal -f /etc/.aumixrc -S
> >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
>
> alias eth0 nvnet
> alias sound-slot-1 nvaudio
> alias usb-interface usb-ohci
>

I followed the instructions on alsa-project.org but yours are basically the
same including the modules.conf stuff.

My modules.conf is essentially the same as yours minus the post-install
pre-remove stuff which just saves/restores mixer settings etc. I will add
this later once it works.

I notice you still have the nvaudio module installed. Why? Are you using
/dev/dsp for both capture and playback? Or are you using one driver for
capture and one for playback?

I'm almost positive I have done things right, since I even have both
soundcards running ALSA and working correctly as /dev/dsp and /dev/dsp1. I
have definitely removed the old drivers.

>
>
> >
> > 2) If I try to use the onboard video (GF2 MX like) with the current
> > (as of
> > about last week) Nvidia binaries, I can't even get xawtv to work.
> > Running it
> > generally causes an instant reboot/reset of the board. MythTV is
> > equally
> > unsuccessful although it doesn't cause a reboot. Plugging in a GF4 MX
> > 440 in
> > the AGP and disabling the on board video and everything works about as
> > good
> > as you could expect.
> >
> To get this board working I first built fresh rpms (because I was using
> an updated kernel) like this:
>
> as root:
>
> # rpmbuild --rebuild source_rpm_name_here
>
> then pay attention to the last few lines of the build process. That
> will tell you the path to the output binary rpm. Usually something like
> /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/
>
>
> I also commented out the line
> Load "dri"

I might still have this (at work at the moment), but the same config works
fine with the GF4MX

>
> and changed
>
> Driver "nv"
>
> to read
>
> Driver "nvidia"
>
> in /etc/X11/XF86Config
>
>
Thanks for the suggestions, but I basically did exactly what you have
suggested except that I built the graphics driver from source rather than
.src.rpm. I have absolutely no problem with the GF4 MX including tv-out
(xawtv and mythtv) so I'm pretty sure I'm doing the right thing with
installing it.

Thanks for the suggestions

Christian

> finally it tuned off usb legacy support in the bios to get usb working.
> now everything on that board works perfectly.
>
> Best of luck,
> cedar
>

RE: Asus A7N266-VM [ In reply to ]

thormj at ieee

Mar 16, 2003, 11:32 PM

Post #4 of 11 (3782 views)

Permalink

>1) I can't seem to get the nForce sound running full duplex. I am running
>ALSA and using the example modules.conf from the ALSA page. I keep getting
>errors like unable to open /dev/dsp. fuser shows no processes with it open
>in general. It's as if it is opened for output and then MythTV tries to
open
>it for input. In the interim I have added a cheapo Yamaha YMF724 (also with
>ALSA) as /dev/dsp1 and it works OK, although I'd like to get that PCI slot
>back. Ideas? From the sounds of things Cedar has it working OK... Any
tricks
>to getting it working?

>2) If I try to use the onboard video (GF2 MX like) with the current (as of
>about last week) Nvidia binaries, I can't even get xawtv to work. Running
it
>generally causes an instant reboot/reset of the board. MythTV is equally
>unsuccessful although it doesn't cause a reboot. Plugging in a GF4 MX 440
in
>the AGP and disabling the on board video and everything works about as good
>as you could expect.

I was having these problems (odd MSI nForce1 m/b) until I turned the APIC
and PM off in the bios. Since I've turned these off, I've had *much* fewer
problems with my Mdk 9.0 box; before I turned it off, I could run either
the nVidia graphics driver *or* the sound driver -- playing the "chromium"
sdl game would cause a lockup within a few minutes.

Once you get it stable, the alsa config is slightly odd too. It took me
3 days to stumble onto that I not only needed line-in to capture, but also
"Capture" to be captured.

-Thor Johnson

Re: Asus A7N266-VM [ In reply to ]

m0j0 at foofus

Mar 17, 2003, 9:02 AM

Post #5 of 11 (3759 views)

Permalink

On Sun, 2003-03-16 at 18:40, Christian Hack wrote:

> 1) I can't seem to get the nForce sound running full duplex. I am running
> ALSA and using the example modules.conf from the ALSA page. I keep getting
> errors like unable to open /dev/dsp. fuser shows no processes with it open
> in general. It's as if it is opened for output and then MythTV tries to open
> it for input. In the interim I have added a cheapo Yamaha YMF724 (also with
> ALSA) as /dev/dsp1 and it works OK, although I'd like to get that PCI slot
> back. Ideas? From the sounds of things Cedar has it working OK... Any tricks
> to getting it working?
>

Hmmmm... on-board audio works fine for me using ALSA. I did initially
have a problem with btaudio for one of my capture cards grabbing dsp0
before ALSA loaded. I fixed that by adding: "post-install snd-intel8x0
modprobe snd-pcm-oss" to modules.conf.

> I'm getting nasty sound glitches on channel changes too although I'm
> currently blaming them on the PCTV
>

I also have a noticeable glitch during channel changes. I think this is
Myth-related and has been discussed before. Someone suggested having
Myth auto-dampen sound during a channel change. Not sure if that would
fix it or not...

> 2) If I try to use the onboard video (GF2 MX like) with the current (as of
> about last week) Nvidia binaries, I can't even get xawtv to work. Running it
> generally causes an instant reboot/reset of the board. MythTV is equally
> unsuccessful although it doesn't cause a reboot. Plugging in a GF4 MX 440 in
> the AGP and disabling the on board video and everything works about as good
> as you could expect.

I'm successfully using the 4191 version of the drivers. I downloaded the
source RPM and rebuilt it for my kernel.

> I see mention of a "TVOUT card" for the Asus A7N266-VM and the BIOS allows
> you to set up the default video output format. Has anyone investigated
> further to see if these things actually exist? If so, I could get away
> without an extra video card.
>

I have done a little bit of Googling for this, but was unable to locate
any for sale.

Good luck,
Joe

Re: Asus A7N266-VM [ In reply to ]

cedarmckay at mac

Mar 17, 2003, 11:07 AM

Post #6 of 11 (3764 views)

Permalink

m0j0.j0j0 wrote:

>On Sun, 2003-03-16 at 18:40, Christian Hack wrote:
>
>
>
>>1) I can't seem to get the nForce sound running full duplex. I am running
>>ALSA and using the example modules.conf from the ALSA page. I keep getting
>>errors like unable to open /dev/dsp. fuser shows no processes with it open
>>in general. It's as if it is opened for output and then MythTV tries to open
>>it for input. In the interim I have added a cheapo Yamaha YMF724 (also with
>>ALSA) as /dev/dsp1 and it works OK, although I'd like to get that PCI slot
>>back. Ideas? From the sounds of things Cedar has it working OK... Any tricks
>>to getting it working?
>>
>>
>>
>
>Hmmmm... on-board audio works fine for me using ALSA. I did initially
>have a problem with btaudio for one of my capture cards grabbing dsp0
>before ALSA loaded. I fixed that by adding: "post-install snd-intel8x0
>modprobe snd-pcm-oss" to modules.conf.
>

maybe you should fiddle with the order in modules.conf? What happens if
you just use my modules.conf wholesale?

>
>
>
>>I'm getting nasty sound glitches on channel changes too although I'm
>>currently blaming them on the PCTV
>>
>>
>>
>
>I also have a noticeable glitch during channel changes. I think this is
>Myth-related and has been discussed before. Someone suggested having
>Myth auto-dampen sound during a channel change. Not sure if that would
>fix it or not...
>
>
I do not get these.

Re: Asus A7N266-VM [ In reply to ]

m0j0 at foofus

Mar 17, 2003, 11:22 AM

Post #7 of 11 (3772 views)

Permalink

> maybe you should fiddle with the order in modules.conf? What happens if
> you just use my modules.conf wholesale?
>

My ALSA config matches yours and I load btaudio after it in
modules.conf. For some reason snd-pcm-oss didn't get loaded
automatically prior to btaudio and I had the dsp0 conflict. The
'post-install' line works fine for me to resolve this issue.

Re: Asus A7N266-VM [ In reply to ]

pml4791 at yahoo

Mar 18, 2003, 7:43 AM

Post #8 of 11 (3757 views)

Permalink

--- "m0j0.j0j0" <m0j0@foofus.net> wrote:
> On Sun, 2003-03-16 at 18:40, Christian Hack wrote:

> > I see mention of a "TVOUT card" for the Asus
> A7N266-VM and the BIOS allows
> > you to set up the default video output format. Has
> anyone investigated
> > further to see if these things actually exist? If
> so, I could get away
> > without an extra video card.
> >
>
> I have done a little bit of Googling for this, but
> was unable to locate
> any for sale.

I think this is the card. Can anyone confirm that?

http://www.pcclub.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=A9654000
--
patrick

__________________________________________________
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Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
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Re: Asus A7N266-VM [ In reply to ]

cedarmckay at mac

Mar 18, 2003, 9:19 AM

Post #9 of 11 (3767 views)

Permalink

I thought the A7N266-VM in nforce 1 where the page you linked to
references nforce 2. Might still work though, I don't know.

cedar

On Tuesday, March 18, 2003, at 06:43 AM, Patrick Landry wrote:

>
> --- "m0j0.j0j0" <m0j0@foofus.net> wrote:
>> On Sun, 2003-03-16 at 18:40, Christian Hack wrote:
>
>>> I see mention of a "TVOUT card" for the Asus
>> A7N266-VM and the BIOS allows
>>> you to set up the default video output format. Has
>> anyone investigated
>>> further to see if these things actually exist? If
>> so, I could get away
>>> without an extra video card.
>>>
>>
>> I have done a little bit of Googling for this, but
>> was unable to locate
>> any for sale.
>
> I think this is the card. Can anyone confirm that?
>
> http://www.pcclub.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=A9654000
> --
> patrick
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
> http://platinum.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users@snowman.net
> http://www.snowman.net/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users

RE: Asus A7N266-VM [ In reply to ]

christianh at pdd

Mar 18, 2003, 11:26 PM

Post #10 of 11 (3762 views)

Permalink

>
> > 1) I can't seem to get the nForce sound running full duplex. I am
> > running
> > ALSA and using the example modules.conf from the ALSA page. I keep
> > getting
> > errors like unable to open /dev/dsp. fuser shows no processes with it
> > open
> > in general. It's as if it is opened for output and then MythTV tries
> > to open
> > it for input. In the interim I have added a cheapo Yamaha YMF724 (also
> > with
> > ALSA) as /dev/dsp1 and it works OK, although I'd like to get that PCI
> > slot
> > back. Ideas? From the sounds of things Cedar has it working OK... Any
> > tricks
> > to getting it working?
> >
> The alsa install went very smoothly for me. You might look at the
> setting up alsa and Red Hat section of the docs at www.mythtv.org
> because I wrote them based on my experience getting alsa going on this
> board and red hat. Below is the relevant section of my modules.conf. It
> is embarrassingly unorganized, and some may not be "correct" but it
> works for me!
>
>
> ################# lirc
> alias char-major-61 lirc_serial
> ################################
> alias parport_lowlevel parport_pc
> alias usb-controller usb-ohci
>
> ################### alsa
> alias char-major-116 snd
> alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0
> # module options should go here
> # OSS/Free portion
> alias char-major-14 soundcore
> alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
> # card #1
> alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
> alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
> alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
> alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
> alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss
> ###################
> alias char-major-81 bttv
> alias char-major-195 nvidia
>

MMkay, managed to get the sound working with exactly these lines in
modules.conf. Didn't really do anything apart from uninstall the Yamaha
card. Either way full duplex is working well now. :)

Now to get on to the inbuilt nForce although I may not bother since there is
no onboard TV-out and it's probably just cheaper to buy a AGP GF2 MX400 with
TV-out and use that instead.

As for the TVout card - the chipset is an nForce 2 but the link provided by
someone else is for an MSI motherboard.

Christian

RE: Asus A7N266-VM [ In reply to ]

pml4791 at yahoo

Mar 19, 2003, 7:52 AM

Post #11 of 11 (3754 views)

Permalink

--- Christian Hack <christianh@pdd.edmi.com.au> wrote:

> As for the TVout card - the chipset is an nForce 2
> but the link provided by
> someone else is for an MSI motherboard.
>
> Christian

Well, as has been mentioned here, getting information
on
this mythical TV-OUT card is not easy. I found one
usenet
posting which claimed the MSI board would work on
"any nForce 420(D) or 220D board with an AGP-slot."

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&threadm=f4402db5.0208112241.7546aa7d%40posting.google.com&rnum=4&prev=/groups%3Fq%3Dmsi%2B6952%2Bnforce%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26hl%3Den%26btnG%3DGoogle%2BSearch

Well, I just ordered one so I guess we'll all know
in a week or so.
--
patrick

__________________________________________________
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Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
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