Hello, I succesfully repaired our old 2000 century computer. Hardware : Motherboard : ASUS A8V CPU : AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (socket 939) RAM : 3.5 Gb of DDR 1 GPU : AH3450/DI/512MD2(LP) (this is an AGP GPU not PCIe nor PCI one) HDD : 2 Software : Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64 Now I need to fix those problem : GPU driver : I had a lot of trouble to find a working driver for my AGP GPU. I found one on ASUS website but it's really outdated. ASUS VGA card display driver version 8.65 for Windows 7(32/64-Bit Edition) Those on AMD website doesn't work on AGP GPUs. Well, they wasn't working when I tried them. Where could I found a more recent one? Thanks. SATA RAID BIOS : When I connect HDD to the motherboard, I'm not able to access the SATA RAID BIOS UTILITY. I think it's because I need two SATA 1st gen HDD but I only have SATA 3rd gen HDD. I read somewhere that I need two HDD to make RAID 0 work. Do I need to buy a 1st gen SATA HDD? Sound Issue : The ASUS Realtek AC'97 sound driver was installed trough Windows 7 update, but there's no sound. The AC'97 audio is enabled in BIOS. How to fix them? Thanks.
I just checked all of the capacitors and they looks pretty fine. They are even at a perfect 90 degree angle to the motherboard, not like a more recent motherboard. I really like this motherboard because of the 5 PCI slots, the parallel port and the serial port. So what about the Sata Raid HDD issue? Would it work with a first gen 1.5Gbs SATA HDD? Other thing I would want to know. What is the year this motherboard was created?
I would like to buy a new dual core AMD Athlon 64 X2 CPU for it. However it must be a socket 939 cpu but I can't find any website to buy one. According to Wikipedia, the best one I could buy would be a AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ @ 2.4 Ghz. Or the Opteron 185 @ 2.6 Ghz or even Opteron 190 @ 2.80 Ghz. Definitly need to find a seller so I can buy one. As I said it's CPU is actually a AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 1.80 Ghz one, but I've also two other AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 2.20 Ghz ones. The two ones have broken pins. I saw a video of Linus Tech Tips that is cheaply repairing broken pins on AMD CPUs. I should try it.
I already know for the manual on ASUS website. For the 1.5 Gb/s HDD, I'll buy two of them today. I already know it will be fastest than the 2 IDE 133 I already have. I also found that I could buy an IDE SSD. Strange. Thanks for the eBay link, I think I'll try to buy this specific one you said me. Also thanks for your help.
Sound issue: Try realtek driver R2.81 RAID issue: The Raid BIOS is within the BIOS. The only thing you can do is to be sure to have the latest BIOS running. But the chipset is old and can probably handle only old SATA HDDs to be run in RAID mode. People reported it only worked with 1.5GB/s SATA HDDs but there was a tool that could 'downpatch' 3 GB/s (2nd gen) HDDs ( ESTool ). Do the SATA HDDs work without RAID? AFAIK there is a promise RAID controller and a VIA SATA controller. Other drivers: maybe have a look at station-drivers.com