Hi, Matt.  Thanks for responding, as we were talking about Ray
Edester's new board and probs he is having with it.- - -

 JH> Reason I ask -  Ray Edester has a new "screamer" Asus board with
 JH> AMD Athlon XP2800+ or so, 333 fsb dual channel DDR, and all, new case
 JH> and PS, and he can't seem to get the front panel USB ports to work.

 MM> Probably won't help, as that problem involved using the pigtail
 MM> "flying" ground lead on the USB cable from the front panel USB
 MM> connectors causing the second IDE channel to become disabled when that
 MM> pigtail was plugged into the MB.  That was for the ASUS P4PE MB.

Sorry, I asked too soon - I had emails with Ray about his USB ports not
working right, and I assumed he had a prob with the front-panel ones.  I
went ahead and posted based on my assumption, before I heard back from
him.  I think his current problem is with the back-panel USB ports (2
sets of 2), and he has USB printer and USB Sandisk reader- -  and one
works in Windows but not Linux, the other one works under Linux, but not
Windows.  Aside from some of his other problems with this board, I've
emailed him that sounds like software problems to me, but he's about as
scared of my advice right now as a blind mule is of a water pistol. :-)

 MM> My first suggestion would be to make sure he's plugging into the
 MM> CORRECT set(s) of USB pins.  I assembled an ASUS P8000 board, Intel
 MM> version, (I suspect that's what Ray might have the AMD version of) last
 MM> Thursday, and there were at least _six_ different pairs of USB
 MM> connectors on the motherboard.  Took me almost an hour of reading to
 MM> figure them out!

That seems to be a trend with the latest mainboards - - lots and lots of
USB ports capability. I think Ray didn't buy the _very_ latest version
of his board because it looked like they added more USB ports, and did
away with either a parallel or a serial port which he wants to have.

Ray's board has 2 sets of 2 built-in USB ports on backpanel, and an
(optional) 10-pin header on the board for 2 more which could go thru the
correct cable to frontpanel or back.  By subsequent email, he tells me
he doesn't have that cable, (I'm not sure if his board has that
optional pin header) so he is dealing only with the 4 onboard backpanel
USB ports..

 MM> Next would be to be sure the pin on the plug with the red lead, usually
 MM> marked +5, mates to pin #1 of the MB connector, and if the front panel
 MM> plug has a fifth 'flying lead' marked "ground", ignore it
and leave it
 MM> 'flying'.  The colors I've seen on the cases we use are red, white,
 MM> green, black; for pins #1, #2, #3, and #4.  Ray might want to check
 MM> with the rear panel connectors to make sure the pinout is the same, and
 MM> maybe even plug in the rear connector to see that it actually works (if
 MM> he has a pigtail rear panel setup).  That P8000 had all the rear
 MM> connectors 'built-in'.

OK, and thanks wrt the front-panel connectors.  I'll be careful about
that when I build a system into new case I just bought - - it has the
frontpanel USB cables with 4 separate 1-pin connectors for connection to
the onboard USB pin header.

 MM> Lastly, the CMOS setup on these new boards is NO picnic!  Manuevering
 MM> is a PITA, and understanding the entries is near impossible.  Go
 MM> through the manual line by line for each CMOS item, cross your fingers
 MM> or select "default for this page", and hope you can get to the USB
 MM> section!

I agree completely.  In trying to help Ray with this board, I downloaded
the Manual for his board from the Asus website.  In dealing with the
used stuff where I volunteer, I tend to think of Asus manuals as some of
the better-written ones, but in reading the SETUP parts of this manual,
I agree that understanding them is near impossible (for sure for
someone with my experience level).

Seems like Asus would have less RMA's if they'd make more things more
clear in that manual (I think Ray has already sent one board back
on RMA). There must be a more clear explanation somewhere -  maybe at
Award BIOS website, and maybe at website of NVidia, the chipset maker
for Ray's board.

 MM> That's about all I can think of at the moment...

Good enough, based on what I asked, and I hope this will spur some more
discussion.  In trying to help Ray with this, I've spent a good bit of
time on the AMD website over the past week or so, and I haven't found
much real help there.  Their FAQ section is pretty much a joke - just
hyping their latest and greatest XP3200+ chip, with not much there at
all for Ray and his XP2800+ chip.

Ray hasn't had much luck with getting help directly from Asus itself,
either by email or by phone. With internet sellers like Newegg and
TigerDirect selling this class of board to the "general public", I'd
think there will be a good supply stream of these newest boards returned
under RMA but making it back into the market as "recertified".

- - -  JimH.

... Jim, why does everything these days have to be so danged complicated?-Bubba
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