Motherboard features

This motherboard has the following features:

• CPU Socket Type: Socket AM2 (Athlon 64 X2 / Athlon 64 FX / Athlon 64)
• FSB: 1000MHz Hyper Transport (2000 MT/s)
• North Bridge: NVIDIA nForce 500 SLI MCP
• RAM: 4×240pin DDR2 800 (max 8 GB), dual channel supported
• Expansion Slots:
• PCI Express x16 2
  • PCI Express x1 2
  • PCI Slots 2
• Storage Devices
  • PATA 2 x ATA100 up to 4 Devices
  • SATA 3Gb/s 4
  • SATA RAID 0/1/0+1/5
• Onboard LAN: Max LAN Speed 10/100/1000Mbps
• Onboard USB: 2 x USB 2.0 connectors support 4 ports
• Onboard 1394: 1 x 1394a connector supports 1 port
• Form Factor: ATX

Processor

I used the following processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+(65W) Windsor 2.2GHz Socket AM2 Processor

Linux installation

I used a 32-bit Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) CD-ROM. The installation went well except for the problem below.

After updates, my kernel is (as reported by uname -a):

Linux idefix 2.6.20-16-generic #2 SMP Thu Jun 7 20:19:32 UTC 2007 i686 GNU/Linux

Problems

PS/2 keyboard

However, with my PS/2 keyboard, it is a pain to configure the BIOS, because you have to hit the DEL key on the BIOS POST screen and the PS/2 keyboard seems to be inactive at that time. Using a USB keyboard fixes this problem. So I remove my IBM Model M (PS/2 interface) and plug in a crappy USB keyboard whenever I want to operate on the BIOS.

Sound

Info

The sound card included with the M2N-E SLI motherboard is a USB Audio C-Media CM6501.

Volume Control

To change the volume using the keyboard or volume controller applet make the following changes:

1. Right click on the volume icon in the system tray (near the clock) and choose "Preferences".

2. From the drop down choose "Playback: ALSA PCM on front:1 (USB Audio) via DMA (PulseAudio Mixer)".

3. Select "master" from the list and then close.

4. Go to Preferences -> Sound.

5. In the "Default Mixer Tracks" section change the device again to "Playback: ALSA PCM on front:1 (USB Audio) via DMA (PulseAudio Mixer)".

6. As before choose the "master" track and then close.

Using PulseAudio

PulseAudio is the default sound mixer in Ubuntu 8.04. Sound works in most programs without any tweaking but not in firefox. To get sound working in firefox install libflashsupport in Synaptic. Logging out or restarting may be required for changes to take effect.

Using ALSA

Getting the sound card working with ALSA perfectly seems to be near impossible. The sound card is supported by ALSA in Ubuntu 8.04 but you are forced to use the 8 channel volume controller to change the volume which seems to very buggy. Commenting out the "options snd-usb-audio index=-2" line in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base allows the device to be the default audio driver. With a reboot / logout there is partial success.

Video

I used an nVidia PCI video card. Ubuntu gives a max resolution of 1024x768. To get a higher resolution, simply edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf and change the Modes lines from

• Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"

to

• Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480

USB sound device

I was not able to make the onboard USB sound device work. Here is the full lsusb -v dump for this device.

Update for 2008-07-18. I discovered that "speaker-test --channels 6" produces sound when the speakers are connected to the gray (side speaker out) plug. The following .asoundrc seems to work:

pcm.!default {
        type plug
        slave.pcm "surround51:CARD=1"
        slave.channels 6
        route_policy duplicate
}

ctl.!default {
        type hw
        card 1
}

Note that you may have to use "card 0"and "CARD=0" instead of 1. For some reason there is still no sound produced by the lime (front speaker out) plug. Maybe some ALSA experts can give further hints.

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