FreeBSD + Asus V2-AH2 + SamSung SyncMaster 204bw

[Rudy Rucker]

*** HOW-TO: FreeBSD + Asus V2-AH2 + SamSung SyncMaster 204bw ***
Short answer: FreeBSD 6.2 i386

Phew, I spent a better part of the Thanksgiving weekend getting my new 
machine up and running.  Hopefully, these notes will help out other 
people with Axux V2-AH2 barebones systems.

Motherboard seems similar to the Asus: M2NPV-VM
Graphics chip: Nvidia C51PV
High Definition Audio chip: MCP51
Ethernet driver: nve

I started with 6.1-amd64-release and found all kinds of problems:
  x  ethernet was not working
  x  nv driver in X windows would not do the
     native monitor resolution 1680x1050
  x  the nVidia X drivers don't work at all on amd64
  x  the audio would not work at all

*** ETHERNET ***
OK, so step one was putting in an old RealTek ethernet card so I could 
update the ethernet driver.  Sure enough, 6.2-RC1 has the nve driver in it.

*** VIDEO ***
Next was the video driver.  I tried updating X from 6.9 to 7.2 following 
these directions:
  http://wikitest.freebsd.org/ModularXorg
Still, the 'nv' driver did not work as desired --- I couldn't get it to 
run 1680x1050 pixels on my SyncMaster monitor.  I tried downloading the 
nVidia drivers:
  http://www.nvidia.com/object/freebsd_1.0-8776.html
but they only work on i386.  I had to start over and reinstall i386 and 
forgo amd64.  :(  As far as I can tell, there is no way to run Mixed 
Mode kernel objects.  You can run i386 binaries on an amd64 system, 
however, you can't load a i386 ko into a running amd64 kernel.

The nvidia site states:
  If you are using FreeBSD 6.x, you will need to make sure
  that the 'compat5x' package is installed.

Well, I have found you need more than that!  You need the 5x /lib stuff 
as well.  You have to copy the FreeBSD 5.x libraries from somewhere to 
run the nvidia-xconfig script.  Here is what I did:
   rsync -av host-running-5.5:/lib/ /lib55
   cd /lib
   ln -s /lib55/libm.so.3 .
   ln -s /lib55/libc.so.5 .

After running nvidia-xconfig, X windows launches with the proper resolution.

*** AUDIO ***
The last step was getting the audio to work.  The snd_hda driver is needed.

The easiest way to do this, is to download the binary snd_hda module. 
get "sndkld_releng6_i386_lowlatency.tar.gz" from here:
  http://people.freebsd.org/~ariff/lowlatency/
You need to unpack that tarball and copy sound.ko and snd_hda.ko into 
/boot/kernel.  Then run:
  kld_load snd_hda
Oh, if you already have the old sound.ko loaded, unload it first.

Here is more info on the snd_hda driver:
http://people.freebsd.org/~ariff/
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-multimedia/2006-September/004864.html


More references:
Asus site
http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=1&l2=1&l3=0&model=1159&modelmenu=1

This page (and any updates)
http://www.monkeybrains.net/~rudy/example/asus_V2-AH2.html



- Rudy
monkeybrains.net