I wanted to be able to come back to this board today and anounce the success of my first venture into the world of Motherboard replacement, and how great the Asus A7A board is. Unfortunately, it has not gone quite perfectly.
The installation and boot went pretty flawlessly, and windows started, installed all the drivers and is up and running. I flashed the Bios from 1003B to 1004, and everything is pretty much o.k. didn't have any problems, until I try and check what its done to see whats working and what isn't. I have 7 problems.
here is my system, followed by my problems.
A7A266 (Bios Revision 1004)
Duron 800
10.2Gb Seagate Barracuda HD
2 X 64Mb PC100 SDRAM (128Mb total)
36X Generic CD-ROM
250W Suntek Power supply
Creative Labs Riva TNT 16Mb PCI Graphics
On-board C-Media sound
Dell 17" Monitor
PS/2 Mouse and Keyboard + usual components.
Epson 860 printer (Parallel and USB capable)
External 3Com US Robotics Pro Message Modem
problems:
1. I have Win 95 OSR 2.0 (which the manual says is o.k.) but the Ali Integrated Drivers install program says that I need at least OSR2.1. the Ali Integrated drivers are AGP,
IDE Cache and FIR.
2. I have a problem with PCI-Bridge not working correctly
3. the On-Board audio is not working (Windows says it is Disabled, but BIOS says it is enabled and I don't think that there is any physical jumpers to change either)
4. Windows detects an Unknown Device. I haven't got anything else attached that it hasn't detected so what windows thinks it has found I've no idea!
5. PCI USB doesn't work. My copy of Win95 says on the CD "With USB support", but it doesn't seem to
6. I can't print anything, says that there is no connection to the printer. I am connected using the parallel cable at the moment which always used to work.
7. I am not sure, but I think there might be a problem with my Modem, but it could be my ISP. The modem checks out, but whenever I tried to connect over the weekend, I got through to authentication stage but got "RAS Error: Internal Authentication Error".
Now my questions: Possible solutions:
1. Annoying this one, but I am in the process of trying to find an upgrade, and I am hoping that when I upgrade and install the drivers, that many of my problems will go away, am I being delusional? AGP driver I understand, and right now don't need, IDE Cache driver: well my HD is working, maybe this driver will improve performance? What is the FIR driver?
2. Is this related to the lack of Ali Integrated drivers?, I've tried the original Win 95 disk for drivers, I even tried to re-install over the top, but it won't go away.
3 & 4. Is the reason why the Audio is not being detected properly due to the lack of a working PCI-bridge? and I am guessing that the unknown device is actually the audio, which it doesn't recognise as such, even though I have installed all the audio drivers...Sound is something I can live without for now, I can always get a new soundcard if need be!
5. I've disabled USB in BIOS for now, but once again I think it might be related to the OS being too old, or the
PCI bridge thing again
6. This is an important one (typical my wife doens't need the computer for weeks, then as soon as I fiddle and something doesn't work properly, she needs it!!). I don't understand why Parallel printing shouldn't work? Any ideas. Currently I have Parallel printing set up as ECP+EPP in BIOS.
7. This may be my ISP, I have had RAS errors with them before, but I've never noted exactly what the error said so I don't know if this is the same error or different one. It seems unusual for them to be down over the whole weekend although the connection was VERY slow on Friday night (and really late into the night too!), so maybe they have had a big crash. Does anyone know if this error indicates a problem for me or for them?
I know this is a bit long, and if you've made it this far I congratulate you. I would just like to know if I am going to solve all my problems by updating from Win 95 OSR2 to perhaps 98 or ME?
Many Thanks
(PS I am cross posting this between "motherboards and chipsets" and "Win95/98" forums)
Topher Bear
Don't wait for tomorrow! Live for Today! 🙂
The installation and boot went pretty flawlessly, and windows started, installed all the drivers and is up and running. I flashed the Bios from 1003B to 1004, and everything is pretty much o.k. didn't have any problems, until I try and check what its done to see whats working and what isn't. I have 7 problems.
here is my system, followed by my problems.
A7A266 (Bios Revision 1004)
Duron 800
10.2Gb Seagate Barracuda HD
2 X 64Mb PC100 SDRAM (128Mb total)
36X Generic CD-ROM
250W Suntek Power supply
Creative Labs Riva TNT 16Mb PCI Graphics
On-board C-Media sound
Dell 17" Monitor
PS/2 Mouse and Keyboard + usual components.
Epson 860 printer (Parallel and USB capable)
External 3Com US Robotics Pro Message Modem
problems:
1. I have Win 95 OSR 2.0 (which the manual says is o.k.) but the Ali Integrated Drivers install program says that I need at least OSR2.1. the Ali Integrated drivers are AGP,
IDE Cache and FIR.
2. I have a problem with PCI-Bridge not working correctly
3. the On-Board audio is not working (Windows says it is Disabled, but BIOS says it is enabled and I don't think that there is any physical jumpers to change either)
4. Windows detects an Unknown Device. I haven't got anything else attached that it hasn't detected so what windows thinks it has found I've no idea!
5. PCI USB doesn't work. My copy of Win95 says on the CD "With USB support", but it doesn't seem to
6. I can't print anything, says that there is no connection to the printer. I am connected using the parallel cable at the moment which always used to work.
7. I am not sure, but I think there might be a problem with my Modem, but it could be my ISP. The modem checks out, but whenever I tried to connect over the weekend, I got through to authentication stage but got "RAS Error: Internal Authentication Error".
Now my questions: Possible solutions:
1. Annoying this one, but I am in the process of trying to find an upgrade, and I am hoping that when I upgrade and install the drivers, that many of my problems will go away, am I being delusional? AGP driver I understand, and right now don't need, IDE Cache driver: well my HD is working, maybe this driver will improve performance? What is the FIR driver?
2. Is this related to the lack of Ali Integrated drivers?, I've tried the original Win 95 disk for drivers, I even tried to re-install over the top, but it won't go away.
3 & 4. Is the reason why the Audio is not being detected properly due to the lack of a working PCI-bridge? and I am guessing that the unknown device is actually the audio, which it doesn't recognise as such, even though I have installed all the audio drivers...Sound is something I can live without for now, I can always get a new soundcard if need be!
5. I've disabled USB in BIOS for now, but once again I think it might be related to the OS being too old, or the
PCI bridge thing again
6. This is an important one (typical my wife doens't need the computer for weeks, then as soon as I fiddle and something doesn't work properly, she needs it!!). I don't understand why Parallel printing shouldn't work? Any ideas. Currently I have Parallel printing set up as ECP+EPP in BIOS.
7. This may be my ISP, I have had RAS errors with them before, but I've never noted exactly what the error said so I don't know if this is the same error or different one. It seems unusual for them to be down over the whole weekend although the connection was VERY slow on Friday night (and really late into the night too!), so maybe they have had a big crash. Does anyone know if this error indicates a problem for me or for them?
I know this is a bit long, and if you've made it this far I congratulate you. I would just like to know if I am going to solve all my problems by updating from Win 95 OSR2 to perhaps 98 or ME?
Many Thanks
(PS I am cross posting this between "motherboards and chipsets" and "Win95/98" forums)
Topher Bear
Don't wait for tomorrow! Live for Today! 🙂
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