I'm putting together a system with an Asus A7V333 Rev 2.0.  It has a small tab in the left side of the AGP slot.  On a website, I saw a picture of this with a sticker saying to remove the tab when using an AGP Pro card.

Does this mean that I leave the chip in there for a 3.3 Volt card like the Voodoo 5 5500, but remove it for the newer 1.5 Volt cards, like the Asus Radeon 9550GE I'll probably be using?

I might be using the Voodoo.  I've got both an AGP and a PCI version.

I'd just like to be clear on what that little tab does so I don't ruin any of my cards.  Might it change the voltage of the AGP slot?  It looks like any card will fit in there whether the tab is there or not.

I don't like potentially dangerous things that come with no documentation!

Whew!  Thanks.  Finally an informed explanation.  I can breath easier now.

This board has a sticker on the bios chip that looks like it shipped with bios 1013.  Since I don't know what someone might have done with the board, I'm gonna start out with everything set manually with the dip's.  I bought a brand new retail box'd Athlon 3000+ 333fsb and a Crucial 512mb 2700DDR stick.  I don't want to burn them on the first boot with the older bios that doesn't read this processor.  I'll go back to jumper free after flashing to 1017.

I've spent the last few days reading everything pertaining to this board on the pcper website.  I've got the i/o bracket, the mb cd, and the gameport/USB2.0 module for it.  I downloaded the latest Via 4-in1's and Via USB 2.0 driver from Viaarena, as well as all the updates from Asus.

I'm waiting for the Thermaltake 480 watt power supply and the D-link DGE530T ethernet card and I'll be all set.  I'm going to use an Sblive 5.1 instead of the C-media onboard audio.

The one thing I'm uncertain of is the Promise Raid stuff.  I made the floppy for possible future XP installs, but I'll be using 98SE with all the service pack 2.0 and 98SE2ME updates for it at this point.

I've never used Raid and don't really want those Promise Controllers active.  I'll just be using one Maxtor 120GB HD and  a Lite-on CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive.  Now, I've set the dip for the Promise to off.  I'm hoping that this will just completely deactivate the Promise IDE slots, but will not affect the normal Via IDE slots.  Am I right about this?  It seems a waste of boot time and resources, especially since the Promise Controller shares its IRQ with the USB 2.0!  I'd rather have a good, working USB 2.0 than active, empty Promise IDE slots.

You see my current computers in my signature.  My plan is to have a system with modern oomph to run my video encoding fast, but that still will let me use 98SE and its Dos features.  I was dissapointed in the A7V880, as 98's dos is nearly unusable with the motherboard claiming dos memory for its own resources.  The A7V333 allows reserving an ISA IRQ for the non-maskable interrupt use of the SBLive dos driver.  It looks as though this is my dream board, as I can use my older toys and still get my encoding done in a couple of hours instead of half a day (like on my KT7A). 

Now, if the last user of this board didn't somehow destroy something on it I'll be pleased.  I don't even know if he or she used the board at all!  The Asus IDE cables and brackets all are in the sealed plastic bags, and the board came in the retail box with all the manuals, Asus sticker, QuickStart guide, the sticker with the board's diagram, etc. All for $27.00! 

I'll have a 120mm fan blowing in at the front and a 60mm fan blowing out the back, along with the power supply's 2 fans and the stock AMD heatsink.  It looks like I'm all set!

Now, if you could get me staightend out on turning this unwanted Promise controller off I'd be even more confident.  The Asus FAQ just says to leave the dip switch on and don't enter the Promise bios, install the OS normally, then install the Promise driver.  But that is not ideal for me, as an unneeded device will be loading and usurping resources from my USB that way.

And, Obi-Wan, I'm looking forward to you're kicking Anakin's butt on May 19th!

Heh, heh.  I'll bet they changed your quote for "artistic" reasons, but I heard it hear straight from Obi-Wan himself!

I actually have an Antec Tru-blu 480 in that box with the A7V880 in it.  It looks cool as I used the Antec P160 case with the blue LED's in front and the see through window.  All blue stuff!

I didn't see having all the lights for the new system, as it's a little bit of an older design (kind of looks like an old Dell), all closed up and beige.

So, I ordered a Thermaltake 480 for it.  Alright, it was like $50 cheaper or I might have bought the Antec anyway.  Reading all those folks with power issues on that other forum made me a bit afraid to go with less power or a non-brand name type.  I figured an Antec or Thermaltake would be safe to give all the right volts to all the needed places.

Any info on that Raid issue?  I guess I'll be finding out whether turning off the jumper  for the Promise controller works like I want when I turn on the system and I see whether it finds my drives on the normal IDE's. 

Okay now, I didn't know that was what the 1018 beta was for.  The Asus site's chart lists the 3000+ as being supported from bios 1017, so I was going to use that rather than a beta.  But now I'll take your advice.  However, I've heard that if someone wants to use a beta, they should first flash a normal Bios including the boot block.  Otherwise some stuff won't register the way it's mean't to as far as bios settings changed in the beta that depend upon stuff in the boot block. 

I think I'll clear the cmos, boot up and set things to setup defaults, reboot and flash 1017, shut down and clear the cmos again, boot up and set to setup defaults, reboot and flash to 1018, shut down and clear cmos, bootup and set to setup defaults.  Then I'll shut down and place the jumpers back to jumper-free mode.  Then bootup and set things up to install Windows.

Good plan?

Heh, another thing.  The 1018 file isn't named normally with the .awd extention.  It's named 1018.004.  Can I just leave it like that, or must I rename it.  I'll be using the AFLash from the Asus download site for the A7V333.  It's an .004 file!  Just seems a little weird.  I hope AFlash doesn't care what it's called.  I know Asus recommends renaming the bios downloads if using the EZ-Flash feature of the A7V880 board to A7V880.ROM.  But, that is a different (Ami) bios.

Success!

I'm back online with my new system.

The biggest surprise was that the used T-Bird I had bought a while back was DOA.  It could have been damaged when I used alcohol and a razor blade on it to remove the stupid sticker the ebay seller had stuck right on top of it.  Oh well.  I had wanted a backup for the KT7A but I'll live without it.  I just swapped processors with the good one from the KT7A and the machine fired up fine.  It was kind of nice that the lady told me "processor failed!" so I knew what the problem was.  I still turned her off.  A beep on bootup is all I need.

Surprise!  The 1017 bios had been already loaded by whoever used the board in the past.  I still flashed the 1018.004 beta per Obi-Wan's recommendation for my Barton core CPU.  I couldn't get the proper timings in the bios running in jumper-free mode.  The multipliers only went up to 12.5, and the highest auto setting was 1000GHz.  As soon as I set all the jumpers the bios automatically set the correct fsb, voltage, etc.  The auto by SPD set itself up correctly too, unlike my A7V880.  It does read 2166 instead of 2167GHz.  I won't argue a GHz.  The Athlon 3000+ zipped through the 98SE install faster than my 3200+ does on the A7V880.

I'm using the latest (5.2 for 98) Catalyst drivers for the Asus Radeon 9550GE instead of the Asus driver.  It's more up to date than what Asus offers for 98.  I've watched 2 movies in both Nero Showtime and PowerDVD 6.  They look great and there were no problems.  I'll be interested to see if I get any game freezes.  On the A7V880 with my Radeon 9600XT I needed to turn off AGP Reads and Writes for games to run without freezing.  I think that was a problem specific to that card though.

The SbLive dos mode drivers work without my needing to reserve an IRQ in the Bios.  I'm supposed to need to do that to enable the required non-maskable interrupts, but for some reason it works anyway.  I've got a retail SB0224, which is repackaged by Creative former OEM card.  I decided to install the cd's drivers and software (with the 252 drivers and that SbLive Unipack XP style software) after having a problem with the Audigy 2 383 drivers and the Audigy 2 cd's software.  With the Audigy 2 software, the drivers can be updated to 383 but the software must think it's an SBLive Value as the settings only go up to 4.1!  With the SB0100 card it reads it properly as a 5.1.  With the SBlive software, attempting to use the Audigy 2 software either had the drivers successfully installing, but the EAX envirionments and speaker settings completely blank in the Surround Mixer, or the system rejecting the 383's as unsigned so it wouldn't install them.  (I've got the 98SE2ME Windows Me system files - the mfsn.org forum - so I have some of the Windows Me annoyances.)  The danged advanced button that would allow me to have it "warn before installing unsigned drivers" was greyed out.  However, when the SBLive cd runs the wdm driver install it allowed me to click the advanced button and install those!  The old vxd drivers and software do work with this card (with my modified inf), but as this box will be my main machine I wanted the autoexec, config.sys clear of sblive stuff as well as the benefits of the wdm's like system wide digital cd playback.  I just made a shortcut to command.com and run the SbLive dos drivers, the dos cd driver, and a dos mouse driver from there.  I'm getting 564K conventional memory with smartdrive, mscdex, and those drivers running.  The KT7A gave me 560K through the years, but on my last install somehow came up with 600K with all that stuff!  I wish I knew what made it put so much more into upper memory.  The same stuff running partially in conventional memory now was all loaded into upper memory on that box.  Well, it's gone since I'm using that hard drive now in the A7V333 here.  When I get to it I'll revive the KT7A with an 80GB HD I've got.  I wanted the 120GB for this machine.  I guess I won't be using the Voodoo 5 5500 except for emergencies (came in handy back when my Radeon 7500 died), or if I rebuild the KT7A.

I had forgotten about the weird IRQ sharing on this board
(the AGP shares with PCI slot 2 instead of 1) and have the Radeon sharing with my modem.  Since I don't use it except for possible faxing or if Comcast cable goes down, I'm hoping I don't have problems with the sharing.

I was able to buy the optional Firewire module and the SP/DIF module direct  from the Asus RMA department.  Cool!  I doubt I'll use the SP/DIF but I've got the firewire port installed.  Who knows.  Maybe I'll get something that uses that at some point. 

All right!  I dipped just slightly into the past and have nearly the same result as the A7A880, but with compatibility with the old stuff I like.  I mean, 2167 GHz and DDR2700 isn't that far from the 2200 GHz and
PC3200.  It seems just as speedy and peppy to me!  512 MB on 98 is sort of like 1024MB on XP with all the crap XP has running in the background.

This'll stay for quite a while, I think.