Asus P5GD1

[Terry Roden]

I have a new Asus P5GD1 mobo, and have a few questions regarding it... I am
running a P4 3.0 GHz (630) (Hot little bugger - need to get away from my
stock cooling, but that is another issue...) and have a 250 GB SATA drive
(going to set up a RAID array once I get another drive) and 2 GB of memory.

Firstly, I am getting a beep code, just prior to the BIOS screen, which
according to the manual, shouldn't be happening - 1 beep means:

Keyboard Controller Error
Refresh Time Error (I am assuming memory?)
No Master Drive Detected

I have swapped the memory out to see if they were the issue, but no
change. Don't see how it could be a master drive issue since I have a SATA.
I do have two DVD burners properly running master/slave on the IDE
connection, so that isn't it either. I do have a wireless keyboard - could
that be it?
Or is my mobo fried?

Secondly, I was interested in running Motherboard Monitor on this system.
Their website says that this board is not supported, but I have seen a
couple of reviews where they were running MBM5. Has anyone actually gotten
this monitor to work on the P5GD1?

Thanks for any insight you can provide!

 

[Paul]

I have a new Asus P5GD1 mobo, and have a few questions regarding it... I am
running a P4 3.0 GHz (630) (Hot little bugger - need to get away from my
stock cooling, but that is another issue...) and have a 250 GB SATA drive
(going to set up a RAID array once I get another drive) and 2 GB of memory.

Firstly, I am getting a beep code, just prior to the BIOS screen, which
according to the manual, shouldn't be happening - 1 beep means:

Keyboard Controller Error
Refresh Time Error (I am assuming memory?)
No Master Drive Detected

I have swapped the memory out to see if they were the issue, but no
change. Don't see how it could be a master drive issue since I have a SATA.
I do have two DVD burners properly running master/slave on the IDE
connection, so that isn't it either. I do have a wireless keyboard - could
that be it?
Or is my mobo fried?

Secondly, I was interested in running Motherboard Monitor on this system.
Their website says that this board is not supported, but I have seen a
couple of reviews where they were running MBM5. Has anyone actually gotten
this monitor to work on the P5GD1?

Thanks for any insight you can provide!

A single beep right at the beginning of POST, is proof the
speaker works. It is the equivalent of a lamp test on a display
device, or the short honk you get from your car alarm - it
proves the interface or I/O device is working.

To be useful, a real error beep code should be a repeating pattern.
That way, if you leave the house for a couple hours, the beep
code is still being played, and you can still recognize the
problem code when you come back.

There are some Asus motherboards that don't beep at POST,
but the reason has to do with a crude hack that was done
to cure the "beep per USB device" feature. One of the
BIOS companies thought it would be cool, if the speaker
used a slightly different beep sound (people call it a
"boop" to distinguish it) for every USB device found connected
to the motherboard. This was a stupid feature, but it
doesn't appear Asus could get the BIOS company to remove the
feature. So what they did instead, was disable beeping before
the other BIOS code runs, thus disabling the beep per USB
device. I don't know if those motherboards actually deliver
proper error beeps or not.

You don't say in your post, whether the system is otherwise
working properly. Does it work OK ?

If you are planning on using the Intel Southbridge for doing
RAID, be aware that for the initial OS install, you should be
installing the RAID driver. This is the so-called "RAID ready"
way to do things. Using the RAID driver, enabling RAID in the
BIOS, but only using one disk drive, allows a graceful migration
to RAID in the future. There is an ugly catch-22 problem, if
you do an ordinary install, and then expect to just add a second
drive and do RAID. The second half of this short note, hints
at the procedure. (It doesn't mention RAID 1 ? What does that
mean ?)

ftp://download.intel.com/support/chipsets/iaa_raid/IAAR_Quick_Start.pdf

Paul

 

[Terry Roden]

Yes, my system is actually running great... This is my first complete
installation from scratch, so I am a little like a new parent; I didn't
recall hearing the beep until I went back in and mucked about a bit with new
IDE cables and such, so I was a little worried that I had shorted something
out. The fact that the beep is sounded before my monitor even lights up made
me think that it was OK, but just thought I should check.

Damn... That would have been easier to install the RAID drivers right up
front - I completely forgot when I installed XP. I do know that you can
re-install drivers like that using the installation disk, and then
incorporate them by doing a repair on XP rather than a fresh installation.
(I had to do something similar once to have a SATA drive show up properly)

Thanks for the info (and peace of mind) Paul!