ASUS A8V Linux Support

By Jochen Voss, last updated 2011-08-31

The ASUS A8V is a motherboard for use with 939-pin AMD Athlon 64 processors. This page summarises the Linux support for the board. If you have questions or additional hints, feel free to contact me.

Summary

Linux support for the ASUS A8V mainboard is almost perfect. Only a few minor features are not accessible under Linux.

component hardware identification status
CPU Socket 939 works perfectly +
Memory 4x 184-pin DDR DIMM works perfectly +
SATA VIA VT6420 works perfectly
(RAID not tested)
+
IDE VIA VT8237
UDMA133
works perfectly +
Ethernet Marvell 88E8001
10/100/1000Base-T
works perfectly +
Sound VIA8237
ALC850 AC97 codec
works
sounds a bit cheap
+

Table 1. This table summarises the Linux support for the ASUS A8V motherboard.

The features I could not find a trace of under Linux are the advertised Virtual Cable Tester and the Audio Sensing and Enumeration Technology (whatever this might be). Maybe these are implemented in software in the windows driver?

A nice feature is that you can update the BIOS from an image file on floppy disk without resorting to any operating system support.

Technical Information

The board is based on a VIA K8T800Pro chipset. The on-board devices show up in the lspci listing as follows:

00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T800Pro Host Bridge
00:00.1 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T800Pro Host Bridge
00:00.2 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T800Pro Host Bridge
00:00.3 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T800Pro Host Bridge
00:00.4 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T800Pro Host Bridge
00:00.7 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T800Pro Host Bridge
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 PCI bridge [K8T800/K8T890 South]
00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8001 Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 13)
00:0f.0 RAID bus controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID Controller (rev 80)
00:0f.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.4 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 86)
00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 ISA bridge [KT600/K8T800/K8T890 South]
00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 60)
00:11.6 Communication controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 80)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control

Figure 1 below shows the rear connector panel of the board.

[asusconnect]

Figure 1: An annotated photo of the ASUS A8V connector panel. Click on the picture for a higher resolution version.

Sound Support

The on-board sound hardware is supported by the ice1724 ALSA driver. Hints on how to set up and use ALSA can, for example, be found on my ALSA web page. The device entry in /proc/asound/cards is

 0 [V8237          ]: VIA8237 - VIA 8237
                      VIA 8237 with ALC850 at 0x1000, irq 21

I only used analog stereo output and the microphone input. Everything I tried seems to work fine.

References

Copyright © 2011, Jochen Voss. All content on this website (including text, pictures, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.