Asus A33 DAV
ChicagoDave
I just picked up an ASUS A33 DAV center on Ebay. It is a compact unit
with a built it in sound system and two tuner cards. It isn't all
that well powered for HD, but to be honest, I'm not all that concerned
with that. Mainly I want it for it's DVR capabilities and SD is fine
for me, really.
Here's the thing, it shipped with no OS. It has HDMI and S-Video
outputs, but no SVGA out. I'm not sure how I'm going to get this
thing built. Plugging in the S-Video into my TV gives me no signal,
and I'm guessing HDMI will do the same. It seems like the system
needs an OS before it will know how to run those other outputs...but I
can't get the OS going until I can see what the thing is doing.
If anyone has any experience working with these, or any insight, I'd
greatly appreciate it!
Thanks so much in advance.
Dave
RobV
According to the specs, it uses Windows Vista Home Premium. Sounds like
it's supposed to come installed on the unit. The link below loads a
flash program that gives you the info for the A33 (links at the bottom):
http://event.asus.com/2007/DigitalHome/A33/EN/
Paul
Hmmm. Only one manual offered, and it is "Traditional_Chinese_Manual.zip".
The pickings are pretty slim looking. Almost like this was intended for
their home market.
http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=A33
But all is not lost. Go here. (Note - packet loss to Asia is high right
now, causing the download rate with this particular server, to be crappy.
Use this directory, just to get some file names. Don't try to download
stuff here.)
ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/asus/DigitalHome/DAV/A33/
Then, tack the name of the file, like "MCE_Ext_V104.zip", onto the
link the regular download server would use. This might run faster.
I tried this one, and it worked. (Inside the ZIP, it says "Vista"
and it is a multi-language installer.)
http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/DigitalHome/DAV/A33/MCE_Ext_V104.zip
Since I don't read Chinese, traditional or otherwise, I can only
go by the smell of what is in that download directory. It
uses Vista MCE, so either there is a Vista CD in the box, or
you provide some version of Vista that has MCE separately. I
see two pieces of media shown as part of the package, so look
for your CD/DVDs.
If the machine has a BIOS, it should be displaying a 640x480 BIOS
screen on some output. It doesn't have to be completely dead
at startup.
Just a guess,
Paul
ChicagoDave
the onboard. I didn't have a pci-e video card, but once I went out
and got it, I was able to see and it worked fine.
I have Windows 7 loaded on it right now and it works pretty darned
well. It detected the Tuners and found the channels great. The guide
for LiveTV is pretty out of whack, doesn't show the right listings
anywhere, so that will be tonight's adventure. HD channels are as
expected, kind of jittery, but the SD stuff is stellar.
I'll probably going the Vista route, as that's what this box was
designed for, but so far I'm really pleased with this first time
around.
ma...@avaknin.com
I'm having trouble installing drivers for ASUS 33 DAV I used Vista
Ultimate. In device manager i see 2 Video driver entry and 2 unknown
devices. I need help finding correct drivers and installing them. the
AV controller is not working either. I dont have HDMI on my TV, and
svideo looks very bad on my tv. please help
ChicagoDave
> Ultimate. In device manager i see 2 Video driver entry and 2 unknown
> devices. I need help finding correct drivers and installing them. the
> AV controller is not working either. I dont have HDMI on my TV, and
> svideo looks very bad on my tv. please help
I was able to run straight video out from the yellow jack into the
game port on my regular TV and it looked okay when it played video,
but was pretty horrific in terms of computer display. Running
component and HDMI was okay with native drivers - but once I
downloaded the Nvidia drivers it looked stellar.
Now I've found a couple of other issues. One, this box runs REALLY
hot. An inch or two above the top of the machine isn't enough.
Likely this box won't be able to be in the cabinet at all (which
defeats the purpose), and I'll likely need to either mod out the fans
and CPU heatsink. The HDMI also only worked for about a day at which
point it only displayed black or purple psychadelic colors. Component
works well for video, but I can't get sound working now.
Frankly, I'm suspecting I'm going to just salvage the tuner cards,
hard drive, memory I purchased, and move on viewing this as moderately
expensive lesson in buying things 'as is'.
Paul
Nvidia had an underfill problem with their GPUS.
The failure of your HDMI, could be related to a chip failure.
You'd have to trace down the Nvidia component, to see whether
it is one of the affected ones.
http://legacy.macnn.com/print/60132
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10119277-64.html
So what you're seeing, might not be an "ordinary" electrical
failure of some HDMI signals. It could be a connection
failure at the GPU.
Paul
DMenser
Hey all, I have the ASUS DAV Center media pc and it was working great on
the last projection tv that we had. We used S-Video to connect it to the
tv. However, we just bought a new Samsung LCD TV and the media pc
decides not to have any display when arriving at the desktop. When you
boot up the pc you can see the display of it starting to run and load
Windos Vista. But as soon as it finishes booting up, the display is
lost. I've tried different connections from HMDI to RGB but no luck.
Unfortunatly this TV does not have S-video inputs which was what we were
using prior to the new tv.
Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!
avakhnin
i have Asus a33 running vista premium MCE. I get video over HDMI to my
TV but no audio. when i try using analog RCA i get very low sound. In
device manager i see that driver is installed. Any suggestions? Any body
else experience same problem? Installing PCI sound card is an option?
any suggestion on cheap sound card what would work with my setup. Thanks
Paul
Download directory.
ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/asus/DigitalHome/DAV/A33/
User manual (as far as I know, only a Chinese manual is available).
ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/asus/DigitalHome/DAV/A33/Traditional_Chinese_Manual.zip
See PDF page 32, for a picture of the control panel to enable
audio over HDMI. I can't read Chinese, so I can't help you more than
that.
Paul
Dave
Thanks very much Paul.
When I fired up the comp this morning I got an official Microsoft
update of the Marvell Miniport Driver and it seems to have fixed the
problem.
Thanks again.
Dave
avakhnin
Dave
you mentioned that you were able to get Asus a33 to work with windows
7. I installed 32bit version of Win 7 and everything worked fine except
no audio over HDMI. Did you have to do anything special? I dont even see
HDMI option in audio settings. Also I still have unknown device in
device manager and i suspect i may not have chip set driver installed or
wrong audio driver . And my AC control doesnt work (missing driver?) If
you have downloaded any drivers, please share links. Thanks a lot
Andrei
onovich
I am in the same boat as you. Running Windows 7 32bit. The audio driver
seems to be working fine with the spdif and hd audo, but no audio from
the hdmi, it's not even listed in the audio sources.
I took the machine apart and checked everything was connected
correctly, it was, so not sure what to do.
onovich
onovich;1173963 Wrote:
> I am in the same boat as you. Running Windows 7 32bit. The audio driver
> seems to be working fine with the spdif and hd audo, but no audio from
> the hdmi, it's not even listed in the audio sources.
>
> I took the machine apart and checked everything was connected
> correctly, it was, so not sure what to do.
Okay, so one correction, I am running windows 7 64bit, not 32bit, I
also upgraded the harddrive to 1TB, bumped up the ram to 4gigs, and
threw in a AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5400+ to give the unit a little
more umph.
The unknown device in the device manager is I believe related to the
onboard amp. The device is called D2Audio USB. I found a compatible
vista driver for it and it's working properly now. But this in not the
reason the hdmi sound doesn't work.
As far as the hdmi sound goes, it's not an sound issue (the sound card
is a SoundMAX AD1986A, but the default window drivers for this are fine,
don't waste your time looking for drivers), but a video card issue. I
tried to find an nvidia 6150 driver that would make the hdmi sound work,
but I gave up, so here's what I did.
I ditched the two tuner pci-e tuner cards and replaced them with a
VisionTek Radeon HD 4650 @ a whopping $49 (the hmdi sound works right
out of the box and it's many orders of magnitude better than the 6150 )
and a hauppauge 2250 @ $90 (you could use one of the 1800 cards, but
then you will only be able to record one show instead of two, the 2250
has two tuners built in, so the same functionality as both the 1800
cards).
The only catch, at it's fairly minor, you need to take the mounting
brackets off the new cards and do some manipulation to it to make it fit
in the case, only took me a couple min. of bending the bracket, and
drilling a small hole to accept a screw. On the handyman scale of 1 to
10, this is a 2 of effort.
Now, I have a kick *** media center pc in my living room. It's very
fast, very quite, and holds a ton. All said and done, it cost me around
$500 total. And who knows, maybe I can sell my old hauppauge 1800 cards
to recoup some of my money. And with the new video card, now I can get
a slot-load blueray dvd and make this sucker play blue-ray dvd's as
well. woot woot.
hope this helps!
Yatzek
Hi everybody,
Sorry to resurrect an old thread. I have the same unit and just
recently upgraded to Windows 7 from original Vista. I don't use video
over HDMI, however I have a question regarding getting to work all the
other things in Windows 7.
Did you by any chance gotten to work this small LCD screen under
Windows 7? I got to the point that the driver for ASeries device (TFT
display) has been loaded in Win7, however couldn't install software
responsible for controling this display. I copied the installed version
from computer running Vista, restored all the entries in the registry
and can see (in Task Manager) that everything gets loaded, however the
small LCD screen displays "ASUS" only - there is nothing else there. I
was trying to install this software in the compatibility mode (Vista
SP2), however it didn't work - the installation program freezes.
Please let me know how to get this screen working under Win7.
Also, what is the most powerful CPU we can put into this box? I'm
running AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+, and was wondering if could put
6000+.
Thanks in advance,
Jacek
beeniemna4355
I just bought 3 of these units for a project i am working on.
i have all the drivers installed under Win 7 ultimate 64bit.
only thing that does not work is TFT AND FRONT CONTROLS.
The display was showing until i tried installing the
ASeries_V1030_V10507 update.
It said something about updating then turned off. have not been able to
power on since.
hope someone can help even though this thread is old.
Paul
1) Only manual is Chinese. Useless to me, at least.
2) No picture of motherboard available.
No picture of TFT assembly.
3) VID/PID numbers in driver are not documented.
Components could be made by Asmedia (affiliate of Asus), but
there isn't even a guarantee they acknowledge the components exist.
They can hide stuff they only sell to Asus.
That leaves:
1) Open box.
2) Discover "parallel controls". Find a way to activate
power, without the TFT/FP assembly doing it.
3) Once powered up, either roll back the driver in Device Manager,
or use Add/Remove programs or something similar.
This is purely a guess, because I have zero chip info to go on.
A normal motherboard has active low PWR# and RST# signals. The
FPANEL header on a regular motherboard, has two pairs of adjacent pins,
which would be PWR#,GND and RST#,GND. Sometimes, there is a printed
color code legend on the motherboard surface, next to the pins,
to give you a hint.
The TFT/FP assembly will connect in parallel with control signals
like that. PWR# and RST# use open collector signals. You can safely
short to ground, open collector logic.
You could check the motherboard for an "FPANEL" or "Front Panel" header.
Anywhere from a 2x4 to a 2x10 header, with appropriate silk screen label.
Using a screwdriver tip, short PWR# to adjacent GND, and see if the unit
starts. Contact need only be momentary - you don't have to hold the
screwdriver to the pins forever. A small touch then release, should
start it. My assumption here, is the unit can be safely started, with the
upper lid of the casing removed.
As a general rule, usually the FPANEL pinout is set up in such a way,
that shorting adjacent pins will do no harm. If all else fails, clearing
CMOS doesn't help or the like, then you can just slide a screwdriver tip
along both sides of the FPANEL header, and see if the unit activates. I
don't think I've seen GND and +5V on such a header, positioned in such
a way that a screwdriver tip can short them together. If you don't like the
sound of that plan, a safer alternative, is to purchase a 100 ohm 1/2 watt
resistor, two lengths of wire, and make a "shorting strap" with that. The purpose
of selecting 100 ohms, is so if you did encounter adjacent +5V and GND pins,
a huge amount of current would not flow. That would be a bit safer than a
screwdriver tip, but a nuisance to build up. The idea is, 100 ohms would be
close enough to a short, to trigger startup, without encouraging dangerous
current flow if you accidentally contact a +5V and a GND pin while testing.
A strap suitable for testing FPANEL, would look like one of these, only
with a 100 ohm resistor spliced inline, in the center of the wire.
Cut the wire in half, then connect the 100 ohm resistor in series with
the two cut ends. That makes a 100 ohm grounding strap, for testing
whether the pins are suitable for parallel startup. I make these with
wire, shrink wrap, the old Molex socket pins, and a soldering iron,
which is a lot of effort to make a safer assembly (than using a screwdriver
tip to short stuff).
http://rocky.digikey.com/weblib/TPI/Web%20Photo/NCGROUND.jpg
If anyone else is curious about the driver, the file is here.
http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/DigitalHome/DAV/A33/ASeries_V1030_V10507.zip
*******
One other question for you. Have you turned off the unit, unplugged it and
let it sit for a few minutes ? Then, plug in and try again ? Maybe all it
needs is to be power cycled ? That's less work than unplugging and taking
the lid off for a look.
Good luck,
Paul
edgar.l...@gmail.com
please excuse me for stumbling upon this, but it is very difficult to find indepth information concerning this setup.
I'm using a MSI motherboard with a 5.1 audio amplifier add-in card from D2Audio which has been discontinued. I do like this concept and was looking for something similar when I found out about the A33 DAV. Now I would like to know how the amp card is connected to the board. Everything I came up with suggests it is USB only with an added power connector from the PSU, probably. Most important the D2Audio chip seems to be located on the card itself, as opposed to the MSI where it is on the motherboard.
I do hope now that the Asus card might work with any other motherboard as well, so I would like to ask you for your opinion.
Thank you and kind regards,
Ed
