Having troubles with Asus CUSL2

[Arch!]

I've already had mucho problems when I installed this MB, mostly due to the fact that I am not using IDE drives, but U160 SCSI drives (with adaptec 29160card). I finally was able to install win'98 on this board. Everything ran smoothly. So I was like : okay, it's 4AM now, time to go to bed & I'll look more into it tomorrow.
When I booted the PC up the next morning, everything seemed fine. However, everytime after 1 or 2 minutes of usage, the screen gets completely garbeled. Like unreadable. I'm talking real color-spaghetti here. A cold bor is necessary to correct this.
So I tried running the system at a lower mem speed (133 -> 100). No good.

I was not able to solve this problem, but if it takes any longer, I swear I will put my old BX back in!

My system : PIII733 (with golden orb cooler) with 128Mb infineon PC133 RAM, adaptec 29160 card (pci slot 2 - according to the manual the only PCI slot that does not share IRQ's), Matrox G400MAX w driver v 5.52 (card workes fine in my other system), SBlive platinum, 3com etherlink card.
The system is not overclocked (I was waiting for that until it ran stable)

Can anybody help me out here?

Thx!

 

[they call mr big]

move the memory to a different slot or try different memory

 

[johnk]

http://developer.intel.com/technology/memory/pc133sdram/valid/pc133dimm.htm

 

[dakost]

I read somewhere in the Asus newsgroup the exact problem. Matrox G400 and SB live. Check and make sure that under windows they don't share a n interupt, or take out the SB live and see if the problem still occurs.
The 815e chipset uses 2 interrupts for USB and that leaves fewer interrupts available. If you run out of irq's disable one of the serial irq's, lets say com2. I had a bit of the same prob when i installed mine, irq's 3,4 were reserved for com1 and com2, then 2 irq's are taken for USB, then win98 for some reason insisted on my SB live and Geforce sharing irq 11 instead of having SB live to share an irq with the USB ports.

 

[JellyBaby]

<< The 815e chipset uses 2 interrupts for USB >>

dakost, really? Any way to disable at least one usb irq in the bios? I would think for most people 1 bank of usb ports (taking 1 irq) would be plenty.

 

[dakost]

JellyBaby well, almost ... to be more presice ... if i remember correctly the 815 chipset comes in two flavours ... one supports udma 100 and 4 usb devices, while the other doesn't support udma 100 and supports only 2 usb devices. The Abit SL6 fits category 2 above while the Abit SE6 and Asus cusl2 are of the first category.
According to the manual usb port 1 uses a non shared interrupt while usb port 2 uses an irq shared with pci slot 3. In my setup usb port 1 uses irq 3 and usb port 2 uses irq 9.
And i don't know of any way to disable the second usb port. You can try to disable it in the 'system properties' and see if the irq will then be available. But i agee with you, there should we a way to disable one of the 2 usb ports in the bios ! So to append the culs2 bios wish list :
1) Add agp aperture size option for agp cards
2) Add a 6T/ 8T memory cycle (despite what the manual sais the
cusl2 has 5T/7T and 7T/9T memory cycles) but no 6T / 8T
3) Sort out the hardware monitoring problems
4) Rhe ability to disable the 2nd usb port
Come on Asus !!!!

 

[dakost]

Forgot to say that i disabled both com1 and com2, since i haven't got anything on them, then the my isdn moved to irq 3 making space for the SB live to use irq 5 all on her own and that solved the problems. If i don't disable both com ports, then the SB live gets to share an irq with something, even an empty usb port and something in there has a problem with that !

 

[dakost]

Agghhh ... usb port 1 uses irq 4 ... i am getting headackes with irq's

 

[JellyBaby]

Hehe thanks for the additional info. Irqs are still in PITA. Even after 20+ years of the IBM/Intel standard we still have problems with 'em. Yikes, not good.

BTW, irq 9 is pure evil! I have had dark luck with that irq and wonder if anything works properly on it.

 

[ogn]

This board has sure made for in interesting swap. Moved from a MSI-6309. After about a billion restarts, things are almost ok. Had to remove WinME. Mouse never showed up for some reason, PS/2 or USB. Win98 SE now can't shutdown all the way, but it never complains about improper shutdown on next boot. USB mouse saves an IRQ and I disabled com2. SBlive sitting on IRQ12. Two USB are on 10 and one is on 3 with NIC. Only took me 6 hours to swap boards. Getting rid of VIA stuff was a hassle. If anyone is trying to swap like I did, I would recommend copying over the Intel INF and IDE updates onto hard drive before, makes things a lot easier.
Sisoft ME now stalls my system on MB info. Memory bench is slower than 6309, using same ram too. At least I'm using all that USB that it comes with. Hopefully it will be more stable than 6309. Also, if anyone is still reading this far, how is your CPU temp. Mine says 18 for CPU and 31 for board. Seems a bit low for the CPU. I'm running 700@933@1.70V.

 

[Arch!]

dakost : thx for the info, I already thought it was an IRQ problem, but never really looked into it. (I indeed believe the G400 &amp; soundcard were sharing IRQ's, but this never really gave any problems in the past with my BX) This is the first time I'm having problems like this when installing an Asus board. Guess it serves me right for getting the first stepping model of a new generation chipset product. (remember how long it took for the Via 133 chipset to become the product it is now?).

I already had the com2 disabled, but I need the first com port for my external isdn modem.
If those IRQ's are really the reason this mb is acting up, then Asus should look a little deeper into it, because I then expect that many people will have the same problems.

Anyway, for me the problem is solved. The damn thing gave me so much trouble that I just gave up on it. I returned it to the shops en installed my &quot;old&quot; Aopen bx gold MB back.

Though I'm 100% sure that I will install this MB again, I'm going to wait for a month or two-three until all those annoying little hickups get ironed out...

Thanks for all your help!

Arch!

 

[dakost]

ogn the Asus hardware monitoring problems that you're experiencing have been common, there are a couple of posts in the Asus newsgroup.
I have the same situation, motherboard temperature is always higher than the cpu. Initially the margins i had were about like yours, then i reinstalled the intel inf ones more on top of its old installation and the margins now are 1-2 degrees celsious. Still it can't be right, the cpu has got to be at a higher temperature than the mobo. So it must be a problem with the hardware monitoring and the bios like the p3v4x.

Arch! whenever SB live gets into a situation where it shares an irq with my Geforce i have problems. It happened when i first installed my old VIA board and now with the cusl2 and on both cases, right after the installation of the drivers, the SB live was assigned the same irq as the Geforce. I think that if Sb live doesn't find a non used irq, it will be assigned to the same irq as the Geforce, or at least thats what happening in my system. I never had the SB live try to share with anything else, always with the Geforce.

 

[ogn]

here's my setup:
AGP Geforce:IRQ11
PCI1 nothing
PCI2 NIC:IRQ9
PCI3 NIC:IRQ3
PCI4 nothing
PCI5 nothing
PCI6 SB Live:IRQ10

USB:IRQ3 and IRQ4
BUS Management Crap:IRQ4 (anyone know how to turn it off?)

The SB Emulation always likes to take IRQ5. I set IRQ5 to reserved so that nothing else would try to get it. Disabled both COM1 and COM2 and am using a USB mouse. I'll try reinstalling the INF drivers.

 

[dakost]

ogn ... for comparison here's my setup:
AGP Geforce : irq 11
PCI1 nothing
PCI2 nothing
PCI3 nothing
PCI4 ISDN : irq 3
PCI5 SB Live : irq 5
PCI6 nothing

USB: irq 4 and irq 9
BUS Management : irq 10
Both com1 and com2 disabled

 

[ogn]

got irq 12 back. forgot to turn off ps/2 mouse. Sblive on irq12 and usb moved to 10.

I'm still having shutdown problems with Win98 SE? Anyone have any clues?
ACPI is broken in this BIOS version I think. I've tried the FastReboot fix and that didn't work.

 

[rocked]

&quot;This board has sure made for in interesting swap. Moved from a MSI-6309. After about a billion restarts, things are almost ok. Had to remove WinME. Mouse never showed up for some reason, PS/2 or USB. Win98 SE now can't shutdown all the way, but it never complains about improper shutdown on next boot. USB mouse saves an IRQ and I disabled com2. SBlive sitting on IRQ12. Two USB are on 10 and one is on 3 with NIC. Only took me 6 hours to swap boards. Getting rid of VIA stuff was a hassle. If anyone is trying to swap like I did, I would recommend copying over the Intel INF and IDE updates onto hard drive before, makes things a lot easier.
Sisoft ME now stalls my system on MB info. Memory bench is slower than 6309, using same ram too. At least I'm using all that USB that it comes with. Hopefully it will be more stable than 6309. Also, if anyone is still reading this far, how is your CPU temp. Mine says 18 for CPU and 31 for board. Seems a bit low for the CPU. I'm running 700@933@1.70V.&quot;

OGN-Windows Me doesn't work too well with the CULV2?

 

[dakost]

ogn, as i mentioned in one of the previous posts, have you tried to install the win98 SE shutdown supplement / update ?

 

[ogn]

dakost - i already had the supplement installed. I even check the registry and it had the right setting.

as for Win ME. The only problem I had with it was no mouse pointer, regardless of USB or PS/2. It just kept disappearing. Maybe it's just my system.

I've tried changing PCI BUS settings and that didn't help. I may just reinstall 98 SE over itself to see if that'll fix it.
This is more of an annoyance than a real problem.

 

[dakost]

ogn have a look here and better use ie explorer, my netscape gets
stuck on it ...
http://www.eu.microsoft.com/windows98/downloads/corporate.asp
There is the ...
1)Windows 98 Second Edition Mapped Drives Shutdown Update
and the
2)Windows 98 Second Edition Shutdown Supplement

Did you try both ?

 

[rocked]

What kind of mouse do you have when you had Windows Me installed?
SOunds like the Asus CULV2 has alotta problems.....

 

[dakost]

shitrocked not really, just the usual problems that most mobos have these days and usually get solved with a little bit of beta testind from the users. Its common practice these days for the user to pay for the motherboard and the privelege of a bit of beta testing.

And on a more serious note, i think that most problems with the cusl2 should be corrected with a bios / drivers updates. The question is how fast they will be corrected ?!

 

[ogn]

dakost - got them both...no help.
i'm going to try putting WinME back on...wish me luck.

WinME works fine now after a re-install. Shuts down properly too. So all in all, there doesn't seem to be a problem with CUSL2 and WinME. Next time I'll just do a whole wipe/install. Probably would have saved me time overall.

 

[bonkers325]

i got 5 of these mobos

no probs

wonder why

 

[rocked]

Thanks OGN, how is it with games? Just as fast as a BX as you can tell at least?

 

[ogn]

I have a intellimouse optical and I haven't tried any games yet, but my geforce now has AGP4x and side banding. Something the 6309 should have also had but never quite worked.