MSI K9N NEO-F Motherboard

This motherboard is equipped with an AMD socket AM2, suitable for Athlon 64 and Sempron processors, including the X2 and FX series. This motherboard works with Windows 2000 and Windows XP. It is not recommended for many Linux distributions. There is no support for Windows ME, 98, or older legacy versions of Windows.

• Realtek High Definition Audio Driver (2007-05-17)

• Windows XP/Vista 32/64bit (38441KB)

• NVIDIA nForce 550/570/570/590 SLI System Drivers (2006-08-17)

The network driver is in this download

• Windows 2000/XP (15081KB)
• Windows Vista 32/64bit (24036KB)
• Windows XP 64bit (11845KB)

• nVidia SATA RAID driver (2006-09-15)

Even necessary without using RAID

• Windows 2000 (229KB)
• Windows XP (269KB)
• Windows XP 64bit (268KB)

CPU

• Supports 64-bit AMD® Sempron, Athlon™ 64 /Athlon 64 X2 processor (Socket AM2)
• Supports Sempron CPU: 3000+, 3200+, 3400+, 3500+, 3600+, 3800+
• Supports Athlon 64 CPU: 3500+, 3800+
• Supports Athlon 64 X2 CPU: 3600+, 3800+, 4000+, 4200, 4400+, 4600+, 4800+, 5000+, 5200+

Chipset

• NVIDIA ® nForce 550 Chipset

• HyperTransport link to the AMD Sempron, Athlon 64/Athlon 64 X2 CPU
• Supports 1 PCI Express x16 interface / 2 PCI Express x1 connection
• Independent SATAII controllers, for four drives
• Single Fast ATA-133 IDE controller

Main Memory

• Supports dual channel DDR2 400/533/667/800, using four 240-pin DDR2 DIMMs.
• Supports the memory size up to 4GB
• Supports 1.8v DDR2 SDRAM DIMM

Due to the High Performance Memory design, motherboards or system configurations may or may not operate smoothly at the JEDEC (Joint Electron Device Engineering Council) standard settings (BIOS Default on the motherboard) such as DDR2 voltage, memory speeds and memory timing. Please confirm and adjust your memory setting in the BIOS accordingly for better system stability. Example: Kingston HyperX DDR2-800 PC-6400 operates at 2.0V, 4-4-4-12. For more information about specification of high performance memory modules, please check with your Memory Manufactures for more details.

Slots

• One PCI Express X16 slot (supports PCI Express Bus specification v1.0a compliant)
• Two PCI Express X1 slots
• Three 32-bit Master PCI Bus slots, one orange slot reserves as communication slot.
• Support 3.3V/5V PCI bus Interface

On-Board IDE/SATA

• An IDE controller on the nVIDIA nForce 550 chipset provides IDE HDD/CD-ROM with PIO, Bus Master and Ultra DMA133/100/66 operation modes.

• Can connect up to 2 IDE devices

• NV RAID supports 4 SATA II ports (SATA1-4). Transfer rate is up to 300MB/s.
• NV RAID (Software)

• Supports up to 4 SATA
• RAID 0 or 1, 0+1, JBOD is supported
• RAID function work w/ SATA H/D or 2 SATA H/D

BIOS

• The mainboard BIOS provides "Plug & Play" BIOS which detects the peripheral devices and expansion cards of the board automatically.
• The mainboard provides a Desktop Management Interface (DMI) function which records your mainboard specifications.
• Supports boot from LAN, USB Device 1.1 & 2.0 and SATA HDD

Audio

• Chip integrated by Realtek ALC883

• Flexible 8-channel audio with jack sensing
• Compliant with Azalia 1.0 spec

LAN

• Supports singlel LAN jacks

• Single LAN supports 10/100/1000 Fast Ethernet by nForce 550

On-Board Peripherals

• 1 floppy port supports 1 FDD with 360K, 720K, 1.2M, 1.44M and 2.88Mbytes
• 1 serial port
• 1 parallel port supports SPP/EPP/ECP mode
• 1 audio jack (5-in-1)
• 10 USB 2.0 ports (Rear x 4 / Front x 6)
• 1 RJ45 LAN jack
• 1 CD-in pinheader
• 1 IrDA pinheader

Dimension

• 11.96 in (L) x 7.8 in(W) ATX Form Factor

Mounting

• 6 mounting holes

We are using this motherboard with a single SATA drive.

A Linux Kubuntu installation sees the drive and allows for partitioning, and begins the installation process. However, installation terminates thus resulting in installation failure.

• resolution: unknown

Windows XP begins loading, displaying the Windows logo. The screen goes blank and stays blank before any installation dialogs appear.

• resolution: unknown

Because the installation locks up before coming to the screen which prompts to push F6 and supply drivers for the SATA controller, the solution that works for Win2K does not address the problem here.

Windows 2000 goes all the way to the partitioning and formatting stage, recognizing the drive, however, is unable to render a readable formatted partition.

• resolution: Create a floppy disk with the latest SATA and RAID drivers. Right after booting off of the Windows cd, you need to push the F6 key when prompted (Fig-a) and insert a floppy disk with the drivers. Since we are not doing a RAID configuration (we only have one drive) we will select the following driver: "NVIDIA nForce Storage Controller". Without first loading the SATA drivers you will not be able to successfully partition and format the drive to be usable for installing the operating system!

Tips:

• During the creation of the SATA / RAID driver floppy, note that the idiots at MSI created a subdirectory in the zip archive. For example, opening nVidia_SATARAID_Floppy_2K.zip which is the driver for Windows 2000 you will note a subdirectory called 2kataraid. Do not move the subdirectory onto the floppy, rather, copy the files contained within to the root directory of the floppy disk (a:\). The Windows 2000 installer doesn't know how to search in a subdirectory.

• MSI Product Page - http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=K9N_Neo-F
• MSI Drivers and BIOS - http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func=proddesc&prod_no=255&maincat_no=1&cat2_no=171#