Has anyone tried ASUS M3N78-VM

[sharkdivertoo]

I'm trying to install Kubuntu 7.10 to use LMCE on a system and since everything I read suggested to usw NVIDIA graphics cards instead of ATI, I chose a motherboard that supports NVIDIA GeForce 8200 series from the MB along with SPDIF HD audio.  Thought it would be great to get HDMI off the MB but I am having difficulties finding drivers for the video, audio and built-in GIGABIT ethernet port.  I purchased a 2nd GIGABIT card from the start so I could run 2 connections as suggested in the articles I've read.  Any help would be great.  Starting my umpteenth reload to try and get everything running.... Had the video figured out in Kubuntu but received an X server setup error window when installing LMCE and have had a black screen since.  Try loadiing in safe mode and it just locks up.

[rodercot]

sharkdivertoo,

 I just had a quick glance through the manual, You should not have a problem with the on-board nic it is a realtek controller. There are bunch of settings in there I would make sure were turned off. Like the acpi settings. Also there is a setting for the audio internal (hdmi) or external (spdif). I would also disable any of the AMD stuff, cool & quiet etc. You may also need to add the no apic to your boot string from the first boot up prompt of the cd. The one thing I am concerned with on the board is that I notice there is a NVIDIA hdmi driver I am not sure if that is for the video codec or if they actually have a support codec with the hdcp stuff in it and that is what the additional driver would do. My suggestion is to run the DVI output and an optical output for your sound. you can check the alsa website and see if there is a supported driver for the AZALIA sound codec. (I think to get the boot command string) you need to hit F6 at the first Kubuntu window.

 I would read the bios setup in your manual there are lots of new stuff on this board to experiment with. I am waiting for one at my local dealer, but if we cannot get it to output sound over the hdmi connector then it is useless to me as I do not have an analog audio input on the LCD in the master bdroom and I would need to add a video card that has hdmi, which I could do with the m2npv-vm that is in that machine now.

 rgds,

 Dave

[Norman Ramsey]

I had a bad experience with this mobo and the Ubuntu Hardy 8.04 install disk.
First I got thrown into initramfs prompt.  Found answer on web: use all_generic_ide option.
Then I couldn't get ethernet to work.  After wasting half a day, I wound up just buying
an ethernet card.  Finally, the latest nvidia linux drivers work very badly with the GeForce 8200.
There is lots of tearing on the screen, and XV video does not work well.

I am quite disappointed in the board.  Maybe in six months support will be better.

[rodercot]

Well this does not look very promising for this board.

 "Depending upon how you plan to use the system, the GPU to go with may vary. If you are dual booting and using Windows, the GeForce 8200 offers heightened performance but under Linux the performance is quite similar. The Linux performance though could change depending upon NVIDIA and AMD driver updates. If open-source is your key concern or supporting companies that foster the community, then without a doubt the Radeon HD 3200 or another Radeon HD product is what you will want. Video playback right now is a mixed topic. NVIDIA doesn't support XvMC for the GeForce 8 series (nor do they have any plans to), but in general video playback is smooth with X-Video and its customers are usually satisfied. On the ATI side through the proprietary fglrx driver, X-Video is right now the main option and some users have had different feelings about it -- for more information check out the Phoronix Forums. Though AMD has been constantly working to improve their Linux driver since past fall, so they may have other plans for video support later on. From here, the choice is up to you."

 The above is a quote from Phoronix. He had to run Fedora with a 2.6.25 kernel and higher to get it too work. Which bites I have my board now and ran into the same issues, The fiirst time I booted it up I had the hd on the Sata and the dvd on the ide channel. It went completely through the setup and then on a reboot it gave me a grub boot 18 error - basically it could translate the lba from the hard drive properly.

 I am still going to try this as a MD though and see what happens. It seems the 173.14.09 beta driver does work although with bugs, the glx driver installed from boot limits the res at 800x600. I still do not know if the audio over hdmi will function properly with this driver, they are even having issues with this in XP/Vista on the latest forceware drivers it seems.

 If for a hybrid or a core, I would not attempt this board if you do not have patience, there are some threads in other board documenting how to install with hardy but nothing older than that ie gutsy. I am not sure on the nic either I have been looking to see if the current realtek driver support the realtek chipset on the board which is a 8211-CL-GR PHY. I read something about booting to recovery and doing a build-essential from the command pormpt and then loading all your drivers from a command line removing the old ones first and some have gotten the board up this way but again with HARDY not Gutsy.

 I will report back if I get lucky or find anything new.

 rgds,
 
 Dave

 

[rodercot]

Hey All,

 Well I have done some more testing with this board. First, I had to disable the nic and I installed a Intel pro 1000 pci-e after installing the pxe 2.1 boot agent. I ran diskless setup on it and after playing around with the bios settings I got it to the point of heading to the AV wizard but then it beeps a couple time unloads the SMB or tries to and then gives me a

 I think DHopc - cannot connect to network socket and then just loops from there slowly at first then with the errors it goes into Ker. Panic and I have to do a hard reset.

 There is nothing in the Nvidia Forums about new Nforce drivers either. But the Setup script seems to be detecting everything on the way up I see no errors anyhow. I also in the midst of that looping issue installed the latest video driver 173.14.09 not the 177.13 beta. I played with a ton of settings in the bios I do not have another AMD cpu or any ram to test this board outside of the bedroom md enviroment, so when I test this my wife looses her md for the length of time I am testing. Not good - LOL.

 I was trying this on the HDMI output of that with the bios set to output audio to hdmi, I would like to try it VGA or DVI to another device and see what comes of it.

 Will keep you updated.

 Dave

[rodercot]

Hey All,

 Well I got this board up on VGA at 1280x1024 @ 75 Hz in UI2 - No alpha blending.

 The hardware is

 Asus M3N78-VM
 Asus 8500GT Silent PCI-E
 Intel PCIe 1000/pro nic (you need to load the boot rom) PXE booting is fine then
 Xplosion-7.1 sound card.
 Pioneer SATA DVD burner
 2 Gb 800 Patriot Ram
 AMD 4800X2
 Corsair vx 450 PSU
 
 So as you can see from above I have pretty much defeated the purpose of getting this board in the first place.

 OK! here goes after a bios upgrade to 0507 to fix the ACHI compatability issue with some DVD roms.

 In the Bios -

 1. Set Sata Controller to AHCI or if you are using IDE DVD rom disable the SATA controller(it would be easier anyhow)
 2. Disable on-board sound (it is in the Southbridge chipset set-up) The internal codec is Via and the external is a ALC883. LMCE finds the (VIA) external as analog and you can use that if only analog. If you want Spdif you must disable the on-board and install a know working card. The internal codec is tied to the southbridge chipset and the HDMI output - so we are lacking in drivers currently.
 3. Disable the on-board lan and use the intel nic I spec or a known working card with a pxe boot rom on board. Once you install it boot up go to the bios and see if your nic card is available as your boot device if not reboot and head back to the bios it will now be there.

 The rest of the bios I pretty much left at auto. I did enable the power on after power failure and setup the Q-fan controller.
 Now go to your core and setup your diskless image - webadmin - wizard - Media Directors - at the bottom hit setup diskless md let it setup the script and wait for the prompt telling you it is complete, Then reload the router on the core.

 now back at the md, make sure you have all your devices connected and your network ready to go. I booted a couple times prior to running the diskless setup to make sure it was booting from the PXE rom on the new nic. If this is all ok.

 Now power up the MD let it runs it;s course. you should have no problems. when it completes go back to your core webadmin - wizard - media director - scroll down to the media director you just setup and change the architecture to i386 and hit update at the bottom of the page. Now click rebuild image beside the architecture box you just changed and again wait for it too complete, (it can take a while) now when complete reload the router on the core and then head back to wizard - restart - and reset the md you just setup this will reboot the MD of course (make sure you booting the right one if you have more than one on the system)

 Now let the MD reboot and set itself up. This will now give you the i386 architecture on your new md and allow you to install the w32 codecs instead of the 64. If you are running a 64 bit architecture then skip the above steps.

 Now when this is all done and setup. OH and by the way if your system skips the av wizard then just click on advanced - advanced from the UI and choose change video res that will reboot the md and bring you up at the A/V wizard and allow you to make your changes or setup UI2.
 
 Almost done. You can choose to do this step or ignore it if you like. With the MD now running. go to your core or ssh into your core from a workstation I use putty.
 
 Login then at the prompt type sudo su and then enter and then your password again if it asks.

 now type ssh and the ip to your new md you just setup.

 it should return root@moonXX (XX= your md number)

 now type at that prompt wget http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/173.14.09/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.14.09-pkg1.run

 hit enter and let it download. When it completes and puts you back at the prompt type in telinit 1 and hit enter.

 Now on your MD you will have some text and some info at the bottom of the page saying maintenance or ctrl-d hit enter and it will give you a prompt.

 Now type sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.14.09-pkg1.run and hit enter.

 follow the on-screen prompts.

 The first prompt choose NO to continue. let is search for a kernal (it will not find one anyway) Then it will build your new kernal and install the driver. when it asks if you want to overwrite your current xorg.conf file say yes. When completes it will put you back at the root prompt on your md. type reboot and hit enter.

 Now it will reboot with the most current Nvidia driver pre-loaded and configured. If you have a sharp LCD at 1080p this will also set it up a the right native res for you. Make sure that you have the view mode on your TV set to dot by dot or you may still have some over or underscan issues.

 Mine has been running for 2 hours now solid. I have tested music, dvd, network movie playback as well as playback from the core and bedroom dvd players on this new md.

 I think once the new drivers are available this board will rock for an MD. I really would not attempt to put this board in your core currently, with all the changes I had to make it will for sure be a head-ache for you in the long run. Not too mention you will likely create thermal issues in a core with all the extra cards you need to install with it.

 Hope this helps you guys out if your thinking of this board, take my advice get add in PCI/e cards to make your life easier. I could now setup this board in an md in about 30 minutes.

 rgds,

 Dave



 
 
 

[rodercot]

Hi Guys,

 Just an update on this board, it has been running non-stop for  a couple day now with no issues, I have played a couple movies over that time just too test it out and let them run with no issues. So if your hard pressed for a board this one is an option as an MD with my changes listed in the previous post.

 rgds,

 Dave

[skatingn330]

Hey rodercot,

Could you get kubuntu running before u added the graphics card and nic?

I just got my htpc:
Asus m3n78-pro
250 gig sata drive x2
Sata Dvd-rw
4 gigs ram

All the drivers run fine in vista ultimate. The hdmi 1080p w/ 7.1 audio playback is great with this board in vista.

I tried to install kubuntu but the screen just says there's no input after I choose to install, or install in safe graphics mode.

[rodercot]

Hey,

 No! nothing would work, Gutsy, Hardy, LMCE, I could not even boot the Live CD without the cards.

 Dave

[tehnoobie]

Thats really weird i just built a server running this board, i installed ubuntu 8.04.  The only problem i had was the nvnidia driver wouldn't compile itself because a xen kernel got installed. Which version did you use amd or i386?

[rodercot]

Thats really weird i just built a server running this board, i installed ubuntu 8.04.  The only problem i had was the nvnidia driver wouldn't compile itself because a xen kernel got installed. Which version did you use amd or i386?

 I think I tried it with 8.04 LTS i386 version. It's been a while. If you got it up and running means they must have gotten some driver updates in. At the time I tried this, there was not a driver for the Nic card. Good news.

 Dave

[kiyote]

Hi all,

This is my first post on the forums, but I thought that I would post my experiences using this board.

First, as mentioned above, in order to get the Live DVD to boot from a SATA DVD drive, I had to change my bios to treat the SATA devices in AHCI mode.

Once I did that I was able to boot the DVD and install the system. Once the system was installed, I ended up having to download and compiled the new kernel (using make defconfig) from kernel.org (2.6.26). With the new kernel, I was able to change the bios back to loading in SATA mode.

Armed with the new kernel, I then proceeded to download the new NVIDEA drivers from their website and install those onto the system. The install went perfectly and I suddenly had video through HDMI.

At this point, I had X windows running so I decided to give the HDMI to the TV a try (previously I had been running over VGA to my other computer's monitor). This was a great success, and I am currently typing on my TV right now. Because my setup doesn't require a DHCP server I disabled the DHCP server on the box and my eth0 is working fine. I've never had any problems with the onboard ethernet adapter, but I didn't have the ability to ping anything until after I disabled the DHCP server on the box.

Now I'm stuck trying to get the audio to work on the box. If I remember I will try to post here to update on how/if I get the audio to work (over HDMI or otherwise).

I would also like to point out that I've been working on this setup through trial and error since the beginning of July (2 months)  off and on (when I could spare my monitor from my other machine) so this has not been easy going, but these are the steps that have been successful so far.

[rodercot]

kiyote,

 I am playing with the same kernel right now and I am not sure how you got the net to work without it. If I remove the intel adaptor and try to boot in live desktop with the on-board nic I get no ethernet adaptor at all. I need to install the intel and then after compiling the kernel I can remove the intel and the on-board works with forcedeth .60 driver.  Yes I re-enable the nic in the bios.

 Also you forgot too mention - to get it to boot you need to at boot menu f6 - all_generic_ide. Until after the new kernel is compiled, then you can remove it. OH! I should mention that it will boot from Sata Mode with this command, I have a 400Gb wd on port 1 and a pioneer sata on port three. At first I had the DVD on port 2 and even with the generic_ide command it would fail as soon as I moved it to port 3 it booted fine with all_generic_ide added.

 I am on the audio problem as well, from research master kernel thread in Ubuntu they say you need to enable Intel HD Audio for Azalia in the kernel setup. device driver - sound - alsa - pci device - intel hd audio.  I tried that but still no luck and this is with hardy. if I run an aplay -l it is still using the Nvidia HDA and VIA 8 Ch. The only thing I can think of is to blacklist the NVIDIA and then try to force snd - intel - hda. You can also check out this thread... it is what I have been using.

  http://coyotesg.blogspot.com/ and scroll down to uncracking 8.04 with 8200 chipset.

 I would like to know how you installed the new kernel in lmce.

 Dave

[kiyote]

Well, I can't really tell you much about why the ethernet worked for me and didn't for you. All I know is that it seemed to work as soon as I disabled the DHCP.

Also, I remember reading about the all_generic_ide boot option, but I'm fairly sure I never used it. I have however installed Fedora 9 on this HD (and subsequently overwrote it with LMCE). I can't think of any reason that this would have affected anything, maybe it did, I'm sure people much more experienced with Linux than I could confirm.

As for how I installed the new kernel:
After installing LMCE with the BIOS in ACHI mode, it wouldn't boot normally. Instead, I would enter 'recovery mode' from the grub boot options, and through that I mounted a flash drive with the kernel on it.

Hope that helps some.

[rodercot]

Right,

 That is why it worked for you because Fedora 9 is using a 2.6.25.5 instead of the 2.6.14-generic that Hardy uses out of the box. That is why your network card worked and you did not have to change any of the settings like all_generic_ide.

 Dave