Thursday, December 13, 2001

Additional features

Additional features of the Asus A7V266-E motherboard include: Wake on LAN, Wake on Modem Ring, PS2 connectors for connecting mice & keyboards, 6 USB ports - two of which are located on the back panel, anti-virus BIOS protection, AC Power Lost Restart, Suspend to RAM, an SMbus, DMI, RX/TX connectors for infrared, and start-up from the mouse, keyboard, or at a pre-set time. Hardware monitoring of fan speed, CPU temperature, and of voltages is also included as a standard feature of this PC99-compliant motherboard.

Also, let's not forget that the A7V266-E comes complete with a C-Media CMI-8738 PCI Audio Controller, and a Promise PDC20265R RAID controller.

Below, a photo of the Asus A7V266-E.

Installation

Installation of the Asus A7V266-E is a bit more complicated than usual. Essentially, it's necessary to insure that the on-board jumpers and Dip switches are set-up for a Jumperfree configuration. This is done by setting JEN to 2-3, and the CPU-Ratio jumpers to "Off". Once that's done, the board's primed for a jumperless configuration, but its still necessary to make sure than voltage-regulation jumpers JP1/JP2 and VID1 though VID4 are set to the right positions. That done, simply slap the board in a case, plug-in, boot-up, and make a quick jump into the BIOS to make any adjustment. It might also be useful to refer to the supplied rapid-installation guide throughout the process.

The software bundle

The installation CD includes the VIA 4-in-1 version 4.33v patch, drivers for the RAID controller, a utility for monitoring the hardware, a program for flashing the BIOS, Adobe Acrobat Reader, a digital rendition of the user's manual, PC-Cillin 2000 V1.51, Winbond Smart Manager, Asus Update, Microsoft DirectX 8.0a and a number of audio and visual programs from Cyberlink.

The hardware bundle

The Asus A7V266-E motherboard comes with: one 80-pin ATA66/100 cable, a floppy-drive cable, and a support with a pair of USB ports.

Next: Specifications.