disgusted with ASUS -- any suggestions?

A

AxeClinton

"Sheesh, sounds like you're the one getting all bent out of shape. I
don't really care about Asus or any other company. I simply find it
amusing when people blame their own incompetence on a supposed "hardware
defect".

OK--Supposed Defect-Tell that to ASUS and iOmega.

You are a complete fool and moron. What I said is very simple. I spoke to
iOmega techs and we went around on this for months. They said and I quote
AGAIN, "There are problems using ZIP drives with ASUS MOBOB's." They were quite
clear that these problems are on the ASUS side, NOT a defect in the ZIP Drive
Design. I contacted ASUS and their SOLUTION was that there is NONE and they do
NOT recomend the use of ZIP drives connected to the IDE ports in the P4T-E and
tacitly admitted they had an issue with some other of their MOBOS too! They
recommended using external USB ZIP drives with the P4T-E which is what I ended
up doing after wasting time and effort trying to resolve the problem. Are you
really this dumb, how much clearer can I make this to you you refried jackass!

No you scumbag it has NOTHING to do with my level of technical competence, what
do you expect me to do, rewrite the system code for the P4T-E so the IDE ports
work like they should?

I guess you sir are a computer genus and have the time to sit down and redsign
the defects out of the MOBO. The ZIP drive has been a standard for many years,
when ASUS advertises "Advanced ZIP Drive Support" for the P4T-E it should at
least work without hanging up the computer. I have a Micron Millennium, old
Deskpro, a newer HP and 400 MHZ Compaq, they all work just fine with my ZIP
drives-DUH! MY 1.7 GHz P4T-E should at least run the ZIP drive without
problems!

"The first poster killed his system because he has no business attempting to
build his own machine."

Well that was sweet of you! You are a stuck up little lout. I have designed and
built commercial radio networks, high power ionospheric heating equipment, and
devices for the US military that would make your head spin. I am a computer
user, I have no desire after suffering 3 heart attacks, undergoing 23
procedures on my heart in 9 yrs and being in 3 experimental studies to try to
reduce chest pain to suddnly become an engineer for ASUS and redisgn their
sloppy work. It takes very little knowledge to "BUILD" a computer today, there
is less involved in doing so that putting together and old Heatkit. The fact is
that there are simple solutions to all the problems that people experience with
computers but the industry is failing miserably to correct these issues.

NO MOBO should suffer a meltdown becasue a USER attemptsa BIOS flash
opperation, if it does it is a defect in the designs and safeguards built into
the MOBO and not the fault of the customer as you eluded to above. This is NOT
just an ASUS issue, it is an INDUSTRY issue. Perhaps you think that being able
to plug some boards into a case, plug in some plugs, upgrade you BIOS and such
makes you a computer genus, well, it does NOT. A trained monkey can do this. I
doubt you have ever written a single line of code in your life. You probably
think knowing what a conditional branch is makes you a programmer, wow...I am
so impressed.

If these MOBOS were designed correctly ther is no condition other than a
catostrophic failure that would result in a brain dead MOBO from a simple BIOS
flash. ASUS so called Crash Free BIOS is another poor attempt to solve a
problem that shouldn't exist. To save the cost of one chip they partition off
some adresses in the exiting chip, give me a break, then they rewrite the fails
safe region, DUH. If they simply put another chip, but a ROM NOT an EEPROM on
the MBO as a fall back to get the MOBO up for flashing it would solve the
problem 100%. There are a dozen simple cheap cost effective things that could
be done to make computers less troublesome and more reliable.

As per your comments about buying a Delll or other prebuilt machine. I spend a
huge amount of free time repairing, basically doing what should not have to be
done, for freinds and family to keep their machines working. The technology is
seriously underdeveloped in areas that need work but instead, all they keep
doing is bumping up CPU/Buss/Mem speeds, thinking that is the way to make
sales. I have no problem with faster machines but I have a problem when that is
the focus rather than hardware and OS reliability. So buying a Dell does
nothing in this area. My sister bought a top of the line Dell less than a year
ago. They had problems, Dell camoe over and changed the Video Card, the
problems continued, They came over again and changed the MOBO, the problems
continued. My sister wanting to not bother me becasue I had had a bad year
healthwise called me to help her out. I went over to her home, did a bit of
troubleshooting and simply updated the Video Card drivers and the problem was
solved. There is something wrong with a technology when a company spends money
on expensive service calls, done under warranty, and all they can do is change
boards when all that was needed is an updated driver. My sister is a legal
secretary that works at her husband's law office, this was their home machine.
She is not, nor will she ever be a computer hacker/Guru/techie, I suppose that
makes her an idiot to you.

"If the state of technology upsets you so much then use a pencil and paper."

You really think you are so superior don't you!

Computers are being sold to the masses yet they are still being built like they
are being used by techies. This is one of the basic flaws in the industry. When
I owned my Apple II this was an acceptable model. Apple provided you with a
really neat toy/tool, they even provided you with the engineering schematics, a
complete set, and enginnering manual and source code for everything. It was a
hacker community back then, BUT the system also worked and it was difficult for
an end user to screw things up other than taking a hammer to the MOBO. If
computers are being marketed to a non-tech community, to people who want to do
WORK on the computer, not to WORK ON the computer, then they have to redisign
them to be more fault tolerant and user friendly. User friendlyness does not
start and end with the development of the GUI my friend! Little things like
redundant back up drives BUILT IN at the assmbly line, an OS that mirrors the
main drive and detects faults and sends a message to the USER to pull out their
drive and plug in another and rebuilds everything automatically, that is user
freindly, yes the drives should all pop in and out from the front panel like a
video cassette, should be standard. Cooling should not be a problem, standards
for fan placements and layout of casses should be more stirctly enforced.
Standards for a whole array of things need to be introduced and enforced. For
christ sake, after 20 years they still have the layout of components on the
cards reversed. In the normal configuration of a tower machine the components
are all under the card, that does alot for convection cooling. The fact of the
matter is that the PC is a Kludge and needs serious rework. Anyone that has
ever been involved in the design process of any electronic or mechanical system
can take a look at today's PC's and realize in a few minutes the gross
monstosity that is the PC. Space is used ineffectively, system cooling is a
joke, adherance to standard sensible engineering practices is non-existent
except where something went wrong and they got it right.

Your dismissing the other member of this board as some incompetent becasue he
messed up a BIOS falsh and should not be buiding his own machine speaks more
about YOUR stuck up egotistcal attitude than it does about HIS computer skills.

Whether a person builds his own machine or buys one from Dell makes no
difference, the design and layout of almost every aspect of the PC is a poorly
thought out kludge. It is time for the industry to wake up and produce a
product that is much more sensibly constructed.

If fighting with poor designs and reliablity makes you feel better about
yourself I am happy for you. The majority of PC users today have no interest in
how their machines work, they just want to use them and not have problems. I am
sorry if the evolution of the technolgy makes you feel less select and less
part of an exclusive community! You will just have to get your ego
gratification elsewhere. Perhaps you could recieve such by offering to help
others with less skill than you instead of tearing them down!

You shoulf take a look at the posts from Paul, he is obviously very well
skilled in this field and I have never seen him rip anyone apart for making a
mistake. He consistently posts helpful answers and tries to offer assistance no
matter how much the newbie someone is. Maybe you should try that instead of:
"The first poster killed his system because he has no business attempting to
build his own machine."

--Nat
 
G

gandolf_one

jaeger said:
Uh huh. The most raw Intel chipset in years was mastered on the first
crack by GB, and only GB? What about CPU microcode updates? Intel has
released at least two since then, so what's the holdup? Updates for the
onboard controllers' BIOSes? The LAN and SI have had at least one. It
took them 6 weeks to update their ICH5R boards for RAID 1 while Abit,
Epox, and Asus had the update in days.

I stand corrected, I forgot about the ICH5R update so all I can say
is......doh! Stupid me
 
D

dgk

"By the way, even iOmega admits there are issues with ASUS motherboards
and ZIP drives LOL."

Aside from the argument here I was just wondering what use Zip drives
are these days with CD burners all over the place? I have two zips at
home in a closet somewhere and they were trying to give them away at a
PC Fair a few weeks back. No takers. Well, $5 or something for used
ones, not really a give away. But even if they were a give away I
still wouldn't take another. I'm running out of closet space.
 
A

AxeClinton

I have an Adaptec USB 2.0 card installed in my P4T-E driving the External Zip
750 drive, It works faster than my CD Burner and needs no packet writing
software to permit it to read and write like any other drive. Once you install
the plugins to Nero to allow standard drag and drop performance on a CDRW the
available space is just over 500MB. I get 715 MB of USABLE space on my 750 ZIP.
It is faster, never hangs the machine and never glitches. While the ZIP media
is obscenely overpriced, I am involved in a personal project to collect data on
heart disease and treatement stats where I transfer huge files back and forth
with a buddy who also bought a 750 ZIP for this purpose. The data must
constantly be updated. He is only using a dialup connection so the ZIP has
become indespensible. I have a huge collection of 100 and 250 zip disks that
have buitl up over many years. The ZIP 750 can write the 250's and still can
read the 100's. I agree that CDRWS are much more cost effective but I have
found that the native ability of the OS to rewrite a CDRW is poorly implemented
and having to install Nero with a plugin so that you do NOT have to erase the
entire disk to remove a file is workable but I found some glitches here and
there. The ZIP drive is very fast on a USB 2.0 port and it would be really fast
on the IDE port if it worked with the P4T-E. Additionally, none of my other
machines are equipped with CD Burners so it is very convenient to transfer
files from them using the ZIP media. So yes... there is still use for ZIP
drives in some circumstances. The ZIP 750 is awesome in speed and reliability
and if iOmega would reduce the price of the disks to a buck or two they might
have a chance of succeeding for a bit but the reality is that DVD and CDRW and
other optical media are the furture for sure. The absurd price on ZIP media
killed the ZIP 750 before it got off the ground but for my niche application it
serves me much better than my Plexwriter.

--Nat
 
D

dgk

I have an Adaptec USB 2.0 card installed in my P4T-E driving the External Zip
750 drive, It works faster than my CD Burner and needs no packet writing
software to permit it to read and write like any other drive. Once you install
the plugins to Nero to allow standard drag and drop performance on a CDRW the
available space is just over 500MB. I get 715 MB of USABLE space on my 750 ZIP.
It is faster, never hangs the machine and never glitches. While the ZIP media
is obscenely overpriced, I am involved in a personal project to collect data on
heart disease and treatement stats where I transfer huge files back and forth
with a buddy who also bought a 750 ZIP for this purpose. The data must
constantly be updated. He is only using a dialup connection so the ZIP has
become indespensible. I have a huge collection of 100 and 250 zip disks that
have buitl up over many years. The ZIP 750 can write the 250's and still can
read the 100's. I agree that CDRWS are much more cost effective but I have
found that the native ability of the OS to rewrite a CDRW is poorly implemented
and having to install Nero with a plugin so that you do NOT have to erase the
entire disk to remove a file is workable but I found some glitches here and
there. The ZIP drive is very fast on a USB 2.0 port and it would be really fast
on the IDE port if it worked with the P4T-E. Additionally, none of my other
machines are equipped with CD Burners so it is very convenient to transfer
files from them using the ZIP media. So yes... there is still use for ZIP
drives in some circumstances. The ZIP 750 is awesome in speed and reliability
and if iOmega would reduce the price of the disks to a buck or two they might
have a chance of succeeding for a bit but the reality is that DVD and CDRW and
other optical media are the furture for sure. The absurd price on ZIP media
killed the ZIP 750 before it got off the ground but for my niche application it
serves me much better than my Plexwriter.

--Nat

Thanks. I figured it must be a pretty custom need. I didn't know that
they were up to 750 though.
 
B

Bill

On 12 Nov 2003 21:22:04 GMT, (e-mail address removed) (AxeClinton) wrote:

...............
By the way, I used to be in the model railroad hobby but I grew out of it when
I was a child, would you like to buy some trains?
............

Are the motors still working or had you "flashed" them with the latest BIOSes ?
 
A

AxeClinton

You must mean this for the poor unfortunate guy who crashed his board during a
falsh opp because of the lousy designs pf PC mobos that permits this to happen.
Luckily I have not had this problem.

Maybe you can buy some trains from the computer genus I was talking to earlier.
 
D

dgk

You must mean this for the poor unfortunate guy who crashed his board during a
falsh opp because of the lousy designs pf PC mobos that permits this to happen.
Luckily I have not had this problem.

Maybe you can buy some trains from the computer genus I was talking to earlier.

Model trains are no joke. They go for good money now.
 
A

AxeClinton

"Model trains are no joke. They go for good money now."

I have no doubt, and I bet they are a lot more reliable than PC's too. LOL
 
C

callsignviper

Jim Shaffer said:
After running my P4P800 for about a week, I got tired of wondering why my BIOS
(version 1006 according to the sticker on the chip) didn't have Turbo memory
mode as listed in the manual. So I upgraded it to 1010, downloaded from
asus.com.tw, via EZ Flash. It booted and ran at the default settings, so I
rebooted and enabled Turbo mode. On exiting the setup screen, the system froze
with a blank screen. The board is supposed to have CPU Parameter Reset, meaning
that if it doesn't boot because of bogus settings it's supposed to reset to the
default settings at the next boot. It didn't -- not with the reset button and
not with the power switch, and not after multiple tries. I switched off the
power supply, removed the battery and closed the Clear CMOS jumper to no avail
-- I even let it sit overnight with no power. It neither beeps nor puts up any
kind of error message when powered up.

I tried all the things I could find suggested anywhere on the net -- powering up
with a floppy or a CD in the drive and holding Alt-F2 in hopes that it would
re-EZFlash, removing the AGP card, and removing the memory and reinserting one
module at a time to force re-detection of hardware. Nothing worked.
(snip)

As a last resort try holding the "Insert" key, until you get to the initial
boot screen, when you power up the system. It works on the A7N8X and might
work on your board as well so that the system will POST with "failsafe"
default settings. Then you can enter BIOS setup to adjust as necessary.

HTH.

Good luck.


--
callsignviper


The truth is out there. You just have to look in the right places and ask
the right questions.
 
C

callsignviper

Ignore my previous response. My news server/reader/something didn't show all
the previous responses to the OP until today. Duh!


--
callsignviper


The truth is out there. You just have to look in the right places and ask
the right questions.
 

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