Month: October 2007

Made the decision to disable the HD audio to the HDMI port in the bios. I know, i hate workarounds too, but I wasted more than an hour looking for a solution, and i’ll never get that hour back. I could have been having fun playing “Phantom Hourglass” instead.

So, rather than waste more time talking about the motherboard with the flaw, I’m going to spend the rest of the time talking about how fun the “Phantom Hourglass” is. It is really fun. If you own 1 game for your Nintendo DS system, it definitely should be new super mario bros. If you can afford two, definitely pick up Zelda: The Pantom Hourglass… It has the same feel that made Zelda for the super nintendo so great – but since it uses a real 3d graphics engine and the stylus for all control, it’s way funner. It has sailing, so if you hated that in the Wind Waker, you’ll still hate it here… but at least the cannon is fun, and you can blast things to your heart’s contempt.

Got this motherboard for my latest build  – Nice featureset – includes HDMI out, supports AM2 chipset, 2 sets of dual chanel ddr2 ram, 3 internal usb headers… all in all not a bad setup.

Threw XP pro up on the build and everything is smooth sailing, till we get to the High Definition Audio Bus.  The drivers for the HD audio actually install fine from the enclosed driver CD, but this “Audio Device on High Definition Audio Bus” keeps popping up like it has no idea where it’s home is.  Biostar, while their hardware value is prime, their website lacks – the US version of the site has dead links for the HD audio driver, and the global site thinks you’re looking for the setup executable (included in the installer… along with about 2 dozen other files that are needed) – it just barfs when you try to run it (duh! it’s like they threw the installer cd at some intern and said “put all these drivers on our website!” and he just started copying what he thought was right from the disc to the web!

Did a little googling on the problem, found some other people who had trouble with HD audio and fixed it with updated video drivers – “yay” i thought – a little unorthodox, fixing audio with video, but since it’s an integrated chipset, i figured, what the hey… Downloaded, installed & no dice.

Dug more on google, found generic realtek drivers for the same model/chipset (these should be the drivers from the biostar site) but alas, they were on some weird site, downloaded, installed, nada.

I’m starting to remember why I hate XP and new hardware so much

to be continued….