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December 26, 2004
another ASUS story today...
My new Asus P4P800 that I bought 3 weeks ago stops playing sound via the onboard Realtek ALC850 Soundchip without notice...
and "Asus doesn't know about it" as my supplier says.
other freaks around the world messed with mostly lack of success with this...
Checking heat, driver revisions, etc. and even finding the IDE cabeling being responsible for the chip bug...
Comparing Boardrevisions ... some issues about a power drop were in there as well... OMG!
Most of those bought a PCI sound card to disable their onboard-sound feature they paid for... it's a real mess... I didn't believe I would waste my precious time on something trivial as a 10 EUR sound component... I tought those issues were gone with the 386 aera and 8bit IRQ config...
and guess what else: the onboard GigaBit LAN component start to sing around in HF range of 10-12 kHz like a little bird when loaded at 100Mbit max (massive gigabyte transfer from peer PC)
oh well - the last 4 mainboard generations didn't mess with sound, so this should do it once again... or?
I believe ASUS has a name to lose and these strange issues don't look like a very famous engineering excellence... (did I tell you that my last 2 board generations were MSI without any hassles ? maybe I know why know... )
Config:
- ASUS P4P800 - bios 1004 beta 1
- P4@3000/Prescott 1MB
- 2xKingston DDR400 512MB
- 2x Samsung 1614c 160GB
- 3 other IDEs on 2 other aTA controller
My debugging steps so far:
- checking the heat issues some people described - 4 fans and 31 celsius board temperature are fine!
- disable Hypertheading - no effect - still stopping
- installing RealTek drivers 3.67 - still testing
Possible Options:
- Bios Upgrade to ?
- wait for new, stronger super-silent power-supply
- ...
- replace whole mainboard - oh - and I got a replacement mainboard from my supplier - and might test that as well...
- last resort: build an ANTI ASUS page, disable onboard sound and buy a PCI sound card...
Asus has the WL-500g Deluxe announced for many months now...
It's a WLAN b/g router with firewall - having 2 USB2.0 ports for print sharing, FTP server, USB2 webcam features ... so basically you could use this as a standalone fileserver at home if you attach a USB2 driver box to it...
And guess what... I want it - but it's simply not available - the previous model WL500g with only 1 USB1.1 port is the only thing deliverable currently... ok... will test out ASUS quality there and decide if I upgrade later...
What is really interesting about this device is the open source OS modding community that use to hack the firmware to add some neat features to the device...
That is supported by ASUS as they publish their complete sourcecode as it's written in the GPL... that's what I call viral marketing :-) - get it here
An interesting forum is here at Chupa.NL WL500g forums? - they even have a WIKI up to share findings about new/hidden settings
Expect some more news as I start to operate this device...
Continue reading "Asus WL-500g Deluxe WLAN b/g router with firewall - USB2.0 print sharing, FTP server, USB2 webcam features"December 05, 2004
The coolest geek shopping list ever - 129 of the best screens, cams, phones, games and gadgets of the year
And indeed the screen category is led by the Philips LCD Flat TV with Ambilight feature...
Philips' latest flat screens come with a lighting array on the rear panel, which projects subtle radiance around your viewing area. The 42-inch, 1,366 x 768-resolution LCD is the most versatile for film buffs and gamers. Bonus: When the TV is off, you can set the Ambilight to Continuous Glow for a superlative bachelor-pad vibe.
How did they figure out that I am about to buy that screen ? ok - I take the 37 inch for less than half the price, but hey... a good hit I guess...