Questions about K8S-LA motherboard

[JM]

I just got a prebuilt Compaq computer with an Athlon 64 3300+ cpu on an Asus
K8S-LA motherboard.

Can I flash or change the bios to something with some overclocking ability?

Should this motherboard recognize a SATA hard drive? It came with an IDE
hard drive, but I've got a Seagate 120gb SATA that I could put in it. When
I put it in, however, bios does not see it. I'm using a molex-SATA power
connector (which I've never used before), and the hard drive spins up. But
bios does not see it. SATA adapter is enabled in bios.

jm

 

[Paul]

I just got a prebuilt Compaq computer with an Athlon 64 3300+ cpu on an Asus
K8S-LA motherboard.

Can I flash or change the bios to something with some overclocking ability?

Should this motherboard recognize a SATA hard drive? It came with an IDE
hard drive, but I've got a Seagate 120gb SATA that I could put in it. When
I put it in, however, bios does not see it. I'm using a molex-SATA power
connector (which I've never used before), and the hard drive spins up. But
bios does not see it. SATA adapter is enabled in bios.

jm

The only board that even comes close, is the K8S-MX, and
the two boards use different Northbridges. Your K8S-LA is
SIS760, while the Asus K8S-MX is SIS760GX. Your board has
room for local frame buffer memory on its Northbridge,
which I don't see in the picture of the motherboard.

HP/Compaq K8S-LA (Salmon)

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericDocument?cc=us&docname=c00257657&lc=en

Asus K8S-MX

http://www.asus.com.tw/products4.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=377&l1=3&l2=14&l3=149

I don't expect the BIOS would be that compatible with one another.

If your board had a Nvidia chipset, then something from here
might have worked. I don't see anything for SIS.

http://www.cpuid.com/clockgen.php

Have you checked the BIOS, to see if there are any settings
for SATA ? I don't know what the 964 Southbridge supports,
but if it is similar to the 965 on the Asus board, you
would enter the BIOS, enter the RAID BIOS with the special
key combination, then set up the single drive as JBOD.
Then, loading some kind of driver for your OS, should complete
the job. Your manual undoubtedly has better, more precise advice
than this. Without the Compaq model number, I would be hard
pressed to find your exact manual.

Paul

 

[JM]

The only board that even comes close, is the K8S-MX, and
the two boards use different Northbridges. Your K8S-LA is
SIS760, while the Asus K8S-MX is SIS760GX. Your board has
room for local frame buffer memory on its Northbridge,
which I don't see in the picture of the motherboard.

HP/Compaq K8S-LA (Salmon)

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericDocument?cc=us&docname=c00257657&lc=en

Asus K8S-MX

http://www.asus.com.tw/products4.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=377&l1=3&l2=14&l3=149

I don't expect the BIOS would be that compatible with one another.

If your board had a Nvidia chipset, then something from here
might have worked. I don't see anything for SIS.

http://www.cpuid.com/clockgen.php

Have you checked the BIOS, to see if there are any settings
for SATA ? I don't know what the 964 Southbridge supports,
but if it is similar to the 965 on the Asus board, you
would enter the BIOS, enter the RAID BIOS with the special
key combination, then set up the single drive as JBOD.
Then, loading some kind of driver for your OS, should complete
the job. Your manual undoubtedly has better, more precise advice
than this. Without the Compaq model number, I would be hard
pressed to find your exact manual.

Paul

Thank you.

The computer is an SR1463CL. I got it on clearance for a greatly reduced
priced, because it was "defective," but I was able to get it all working.
However, I did not receive the disks, docs, etc., and as you might have
noticed the ASUS website has nothing on this board, drivers, etc. I got all
the drivers necessary from SIS and a couple other places. This mobo
basically is an OEM board for Compaq, so the bios is very limited, like most
prebuilts.

I've got SATA enabled in bios, so I would expect for bios to recognize the
drive on either channel 3 (SATA1) or channel 4 (SATA2). But it doesn't see
it at all.

jm

 

[Paul]

Thank you.

The computer is an SR1463CL. I got it on clearance for a greatly reduced
priced, because it was "defective," but I was able to get it all working.
However, I did not receive the disks, docs, etc., and as you might have
noticed the ASUS website has nothing on this board, drivers, etc. I got all
the drivers necessary from SIS and a couple other places. This mobo
basically is an OEM board for Compaq, so the bios is very limited, like most
prebuilts.

I've got SATA enabled in bios, so I would expect for bios to recognize the
drive on either channel 3 (SATA1) or channel 4 (SATA2). But it doesn't see
it at all.

jm

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/manualCategory?cc=us&product=501558&lc=en

Wow. Not a lot on there to work with. No manual with exact
BIOS screens.

http://www.sis.com/products/sis964.htm

The Asus P5S800-VM uses the SIS964 Southbridge, so would be the
best match in terms of finding instructions. The SATA logic
block inside the Southbridge is the equivalent of SIS180 or SIS181.
I notice in the BIOS section of the download page on the support.asus.com
site, that support for native SATA mode (non-RAID) was added to
that BIOS, so at least in the case of the P5S800-VM, it can
support both. Sometimes, these SIS BIOS only offer RAID modes.

The P5S800-VM BIOS makes no mention of any magic key to press,
to enter the RAID BIOS. On that motherboard, two settings to check
are:

Interrupt 19 Capture [Enabled] ; this is int 0x13 service, which
; allows the SATA RAID BIOS to offer
; boot services. You cannot boot from
; a drive, unless it is supported by
; int 0x13 registration.

Add On ROM Display Mode [Force BIOS] ; RAID BIOS should print a message
; on the screen, when it runs.

Now, the P5S800-VM doesn't have the manual section that describes
RAID. The P4S800D has that section (PDF pg.77). Download this:

http://dlsvr03.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/sock478/P4S800D/e1443_p4s800d.zip

Pressing <ctrl> S when the BIOS starts, may get the SIS RAID BIOS
to appear, assuming Interrupt 19 Capture was Enabled and saved
on a previous BIOS run. At the very least, there should be
some kind of SATA message printed on the BIOS screen, when the
BIOS POSTs.

If the BIOS refuses to offer a native SATA mode (i.e. non-RAID),
selecting JBOD from a RAID screen, might be the best you'll be
able to do. Support for SATA is provided by a separate code
module inside the BIOS image (I have extracted that option
ROM with mmtool, for the P4S800-VM, and can see the text strings
for on-screen RAID mode. I'd try the same for the HP BIOS, if
I could figure out how to get the BIOS file out of the installer.)

The RAID driver from the www.sis.com site might do as a
driver at the OS level (Win2K/WinXP at least). The above
mentioned two motherboard download pages may have older drivers
you can try as well.

*******

BIOS Update for K8S-LA (don't use unless desperate)
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...item=pv-28445-5&product=501558&dlc=en&lang=en

*******

Good luck,
Paul