Cuzman said:
The *Downloads* section of the Asus website offers nothing on this
socket 754 motherboard. Is there anywhere I can download a set of
drivers and BIOS updates?
It is an OEM board. Asus may make the board, but HP/Compaq is
responsible for support. Normally, there would be a "recovery
CD" or the like, that comes with the computer. Try looking
around the HP site and see if they have separate driver
files - I don't know if they support their users that way
or not. The K8N8X-LA hardware page is here:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericDocument?lc=en&cc=us&docname=c00223155
Finding drivers is not particularly a problem, as long as you can
identify the part numbers on the chips, and you have some idea
of what drivers are normally used on a motherboard.
For example, you could used the Nforce3 250 chipset drivers
from here (click "All"):
http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?Type=All&model=K8N
The K8N has an ALC850 AC'97 sound chip, and the sound driver has
to match the Southbridge and the AC'97 sound chip type. It is
possible the K8N sound driver has drivers for both ALC650 and
ALC850 - if not, you'll have to snoop around and find a better
match. You could check the MSI web site, Giga-byte, and so
on, for an Nforce3 board with an ALC650 chip connected to it.
For Firewire, there is probably enough adherence to standards,
that the OS driver will be enough to get it to work.
For BIOS updates, get those from HP. The OEM hardware design
may not match any Asus product well enough to work properly,
and you might have some difficulties due to the ID check
done by the BIOS flashing tools. All it would take is for
the BIOS code to sit in an error loop, for a flashed
"foreign" BIOS to cause the board to no longer POST. Not
worth the risk, unless you own the appropriate type of
BIOS Savior (ioss.com.tw).
In terms of headers, jumper settings and the like, some things
on the OEM boards are designed to HP's specifications, while
others are closer to an industry standard. Stick with any HP
documentation you can find, to figure out anything like that.
Paul
