Asus A7N8X Delux vs Slackwave

linky_fan

Asus A7N8X Delux + Nvidia OpenGL + Surround sound almost fixed.  ( post #1)

UPDATE:

Oh man it was long.. Just a little update, i got an email from a LQ user asking about one thread i created regarding this matter.. and here's an update i replied to him. It should help anyone else who is getting problems setting up Nforce sound, video, and network drivers.

the quick answer is 'it almost works'... It really turned out that i had 2 reasons why my computer kept freezing... ATI card and gay drivers... and my 250 gig sata hard drive was failing on me... It was too late when i noticed =/ and i lost everything..

But anyway, i got everything to work, except that the games have a slight delay between the audio, and the gameplay.. Nvidia claims that the latest nforce2 audio drivers that came out 3 days ago fixes that, but i haven't played a game to check yet. Secondly, you can watch movies only and only on Totem player, and you can't skip through the movie or it will crash... (hey... better than nothing)

im hoping you dont have ATI card, coz if you do, you're screwed.. they have the worst drivers, especially linux drivers... I spent days trying to get them to work.. Worked once, then i couldnt figure it out again..

What i did, is buy myself an nvidia geforce 6800 card, and it works perfectly. But there are a few things you should do first...

Firstly, keep hotplug installed, it installs essential drivers your motherboard needs. (like some which don't let your computer lag every 1 second)

but in the blacklist, make sure it includes
(/etc/hotplug/blacklist)

snd-pcm-oss
snd-mixer-oss
snd-intel8x0
snd-ac97-codec
gameport
snd-pcm
snd-timer
snd-page-alloc
snd-mpu401-uart
snd-rawmidi
snd-seq-device
snd-rawmidi
snd

fglrx
radeon
rivafb
forcedeth

fglrx, radeon, and rivafb only put there if you're on an nvidia card, and not an ati card, otherwise, omitt them.

keep forcedeth there, coz these are the linux default network drivers.. you're going to install nvidia's.

download the new nforce drivers and the latest nvidia video drivers (if you're using nvidia card) from their website.

Now reboot.. after you reboot, if you lsmod, you shouldn't see any alsa or oss drivers there.. good.. also, you shouldnt see forcedeth there, and you shouldnt have any network drivers installed.. this makes life easier...

chmod +x NFORCE-Linux-x86-1.0-0292-pkg1.run
chmod +x NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-6111-pkg1.run

(if you have nvidia card, then)
./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-6111-pkg1.run
and install them. then read the documentation on what to edit in /etc/X11/xorg.conf
mainly as i remember, you have to set Driver to nvidia in
Section "Device"
Identifier "nvidiaCard"
Driver "nvidia"
#VideoRam 131072
# Insert Clocks lines here if appropriate
EndSection

And go to /etc/modules.conf and delete everything there but these three lines. If you can't see any of them, then just manually add them:

alias sound-slot-0 nvsound
alias eth0 nvnet
alias char-major-195 nvidia

First one sets the sound, second sets the network, third sets the gfx card (if you have nvidia card.)

next... install audio drivers from
./NFORCE-Linux-x86-1.0-0292-pkg1.run
Don't install the network drivers yet, unselect it.

When you finish installing audio drivers, don't bother running alsaconf, it wont detect any drivers there.. But once you reboot, the nvsound drivers should be installed and running.

make sure your ethernet cable is plugged in the Gigabit slot (the top one afaik).
then run
./NFORCE-Linux-x86-1.0-0292-pkg1.run
unselect the audio, and install the network drivers. (ignore all the warnings)

once finished, reboot, and if everything goes smoothly, the nvnet drivers should load, and during boot time, you should get a warning saying that might taint the kernel (ignore that.. if you get the message, it meens all is well).

enter kde through startx, you should see the nvidia sign before loading kde. this meens your gfx drivers are up and running.

open a console terminal, and type
nvmixer
Speaker -> set to 5.1 surround sound.
and under xmms, Totem, or anything else, use the OSS drivers there.
Sound should work.

ping an ip address and you should get a response, (that is, if you fixed your network before, using netconfig). If you still don't get a ping response, connect your ethernet cable to the 100Mb slot (bottom), and try again. but on mine, it works on the top one.

And that's that.


NOTES:
I disabled OSS from my kernel.. i doubt you have to do that, but just incase you do, just go to

cd /usr/src/linux
make xconfig

go to Sound, and disable OSS sound modules from there (n)

And to recompile the kernel, follow DaOne's post on "Kernel compiling guide for newbies"

Keep in mind, everytime you recompile the kernel, you have to reinstall all your drivers again (sound, graphics, and network).

Once you get the hang of it, it will take you 5 minuts tops to reinstall them.