p4c800e deluxe Flash problems (BIOS v1022)

[Andreas Gunzer]

Hi!

I wanted to flash my p4c800e deluxe from 1019 to latest 1022.
Used afudos.exe -> no prolems.
Reboot -> Windows startup -> everything`s fine.

After next boot system won`t boot anymore. No beeps, no VGA: NOTHING.

Removed CMOS battery: First boot ok, after next boot: DEAD.

Flashed back to 1019: no more problems. Would like to test ver 1022 because
of sound problems.

DOes anyone know (or heard of) this problem?

BTW: Asus don`t answer my mail

Thx community...

Greetz
Andy

 

[Yolé]

Hello,

BTW: Asus don`t answer my mail

I have buy one ASUS P4C800ED MB and the last !

**** compagny...

I have the same problems...

 

[Paul]

Hello,

BTW: Asus don`t answer my mail

I have buy one ASUS P4C800ED MB and the last !

**** compagny...

I have the same problems...

Yolé

Try the phone. There are phone numbers on the contact page.
Pick the location nearest to you. Asus makes more than
2 million motherboards a month, so getting personalized
service is difficult.

http://usa.asus.com/contact/contactindex.htm

For a sound driver, try the 5150 driver for the P5P800. That
is what I use on my P4C800-E Deluxe. (And I have left my BIOS
at the original revision that shipped with the board, 1014. I
use a Northwood processor, so don't need later revisions).

Go here, click "Drivers", then look for "SoundMAX Audio Driver
version 5.12.5150 for Windows 2000/XP". This driver fixes the
"muddy sound" problem. Don't bother with the other later
drivers, as they include some Creative Labs software, and I
believe a small trick is required to get them to install.

http://support.asus.com.tw/download...00&product=1&f_name=&type=All&SLanguage=en-us

Also, in the BIOS, make sure "ICH Delayed Transaction" [Enabled],
and set "PCI Latency Timer" is set to 32 or 64, but no higher. That
might help with underruns on the sound chip. (Distortion when the
Windows desktop first appears, and the Bill Gates theme music plays.)

If you have the "occasional click" problem, the new driver seems
to reduce the frequency it happens, but doesn't completely cure it.

If none of that helps, tell us what the problem is with the sound

If you have foreign hardware, such as a TV tuner card, or some other
hardware using a badly behaving software driver, remove the driver
and card, and see if the problem is cured.

If this is the "driver cannot find the sound chip" problem,
I have no answer for that one.

If you need to see the enumeration of the sound chip, get a
copy of Everest Home Edition from Lavalys.com. One of the
device information options will give the Ven/Dev/Subsys/Ver
of the AD1985 sound chip. On my board, it reports
8086/24D5/80F31043/02 and that info must match one of the
lines in the .inf file in the driver installer, for the
driver to be installed. Sometimes a line like that will
have to be added, if you "borrow" a driver for the AD1985,
from a place like Dell.

HTH,
Paul

 

[Andreas Gunzer]

If none of that helps, tell us what the problem is with the sound

Exactly what you described. But i have an extra pci soundcard (creative
64pci) (of course with disabled onboard sound) and the problem is STILL
there. What the hell is this?

Read somewhere in WWW, that this problem is probably caused by the video
drivers. Tried several of them: no improvement!

 

[Yolé]

Hello,

Asus makes more than
2 million motherboards a month, so getting personalized
service is difficult.

.... and so much Problems ! Incredible !

But in "French" the service is poor !

Can I find a Bios in french version for the P4c800ED ?

Thanks for your Answer
--
Yolé

Hello,

BTW: Asus don`t answer my mail

I have buy one ASUS P4C800ED MB and the last !

**** compagny...

I have the same problems...

Yolé

Try the phone. There are phone numbers on the contact page.
Pick the location nearest to you. Asus makes more than
2 million motherboards a month, so getting personalized
service is difficult.

http://usa.asus.com/contact/contactindex.htm

For a sound driver, try the 5150 driver for the P5P800. That
is what I use on my P4C800-E Deluxe. (And I have left my BIOS
at the original revision that shipped with the board, 1014. I
use a Northwood processor, so don't need later revisions).

Go here, click "Drivers", then look for "SoundMAX Audio Driver
version 5.12.5150 for Windows 2000/XP". This driver fixes the
"muddy sound" problem. Don't bother with the other later
drivers, as they include some Creative Labs software, and I
believe a small trick is required to get them to install.

http://support.asus.com.tw/download...00&product=1&f_name=&type=All&SLanguage=en-us

Also, in the BIOS, make sure "ICH Delayed Transaction" [Enabled],
and set "PCI Latency Timer" is set to 32 or 64, but no higher. That
might help with underruns on the sound chip. (Distortion when the
Windows desktop first appears, and the Bill Gates theme music plays.)

If you have the "occasional click" problem, the new driver seems
to reduce the frequency it happens, but doesn't completely cure it.

If none of that helps, tell us what the problem is with the sound

If you have foreign hardware, such as a TV tuner card, or some other
hardware using a badly behaving software driver, remove the driver
and card, and see if the problem is cured.

If this is the "driver cannot find the sound chip" problem,
I have no answer for that one.

If you need to see the enumeration of the sound chip, get a
copy of Everest Home Edition from Lavalys.com. One of the
device information options will give the Ven/Dev/Subsys/Ver
of the AD1985 sound chip. On my board, it reports
8086/24D5/80F31043/02 and that info must match one of the
lines in the .inf file in the driver installer, for the
driver to be installed. Sometimes a line like that will
have to be added, if you "borrow" a driver for the AD1985,
from a place like Dell.

HTH,
Paul

 

[Paul]

Exactly what you described. But i have an extra pci soundcard (creative
64pci) (of course with disabled onboard sound) and the problem is STILL
there. What the hell is this?

Read somewhere in WWW, that this problem is probably caused by the video
drivers. Tried several of them: no improvement!

Put the Creative card in slot 1 (and leave slot 5 empty) or
put the card in slot 5 (and leave slot 1 empty). That will
make the Creative card the only card using that interrupt
signal, which improves latency.

You should describe your sound symptoms in your own words, so
we understand what you are hearing. There are all sorts of
different problems you can have with sound, so any info you
give will help reduce the possibilities.

Paul

 

[Paul]

Hello,

Asus makes more than
2 million motherboards a month, so getting personalized
service is difficult.

... and so much Problems ! Incredible !

But in "French" the service is poor !

Can I find a Bios in french version for the P4c800ED ?

Thanks for your Answer

Asus localisation support seems to be pretty variable. And
hard to explain. For example, on the P4C800-E, the BIOS has
language modules for English and German, while the download
site has user manuals in English and French.

Yet, the P4P800 SE has three language modules, English,
French, and German. So, Asus does occasionally support
French.

Also, there is no guarantee the language support is
uniform within the BIOS. I don't see anything but
English for some of the RAID BIOS modules, meaning
for any functions other than the main BIOS code,
you might not get the support you would expect.

Unless specifically stated as an addition on the download
page, if French is not in the first release of the BIOS,
I would not expect it to appear in a later release.

To determine language support, without loading the BIOS into
the flash chip, I use "mmtool" to extract AMI Bios modules.
The BIOS modules containing each language are labelled
MultiLanguage, and once extracted, viewing them with
a hex editor identifies what single language is contained
in each one.

Paul

 

[Andreas Gunzer]

that`s the way i did it: Creative in PCI1 and pci5 is empty.

Sound symptoms: (hard to explain)

The sound (games/mp3/etc) does not sound clear; means lot of crackling.
Looks like it makes no difference how high the CPU load is.

How can i explain it more exactly?

 

[Yolé]

Hello,

Thank you for these answers

I think that my next motherboard will come from INTEL (again) !

Best regards

 

[Paul]

that`s the way i did it: Creative in PCI1 and pci5 is empty.

Sound symptoms: (hard to explain)

The sound (games/mp3/etc) does not sound clear; means lot of crackling.
Looks like it makes no difference how high the CPU load is.

How can i explain it more exactly?

Crackling is a fine term to describe the problem. That could be
an underrun, meaning the Creative runs out of data to convert to
analog, so what it does is it uses the last data value for a
fraction of a second. The "flat spot" in the waveform is what
makes the crackling.

The trick is, to improve the real time response from when an
interrupt is asserted by the sound device, until data is DMA
transferred to the chip. Preventing the sharing of an interrupt
line, means that multiple interrupt handlers are not invoked
serially, until the interrupting device is found.

A DMA transfer that happens over the PCI bus, can be denied its
fair share of bus bandwidth, by another greedy PCI device. (That
is why I suggest turning down the PCI latency timer.) Another
mechanism, is if slower subtending busses, cause the PCI bus to
have long service latency. For example, accesses to disk on
some Southbridges, means the PCI bus can be tied up for 30-40
cycles waiting for an acknowledge. This means much bus bandwidth
can be wasted, and the sound chip starves for data. Enabling
delayed transaction, allows one PCI access to be retried at
a later time, in order to let other traffic use the PCI bus.
This enhances the total bandwidth available on the PCI bus,
and allows more DMA transfers to complete in time.

I suppose another potential issue, might be the interrupt service
policy. If a priority encoder is used for interrupts, there is
no bound on the service time of an interrupt (that assumes one
piece of hardware generates a lot of interrupts per second). The
Asus manual gives the impression in the IRQ description in the
manual, that interrupts have strict priority, but I'm not really
sure if that is how PIC/APIC work or not. I think I tried messing
with the assigned IRQ number for a sound card, and didn't get much
improvement at all in performance.

If you have any ill-behaved third party cards, they can upset
sound. Some devices have drivers that do not complete their
interrupt service routine in a timely manner.

Yes, it doesn't seem to depend on CPU loading. Since sound
is interrupt driven, the interrupt mechanism should ensure
that even at 100% CPU the sound works. If an application
ran un-interruptable, it would be a different matter.

Paul