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Switches and Jumpers

Despite the fact that ASUS states that the A7V266-E is entirely jumperless, looking at the board brings back memories from the past. Basically everything can be configured using either jumpers or dip switches, however it is also possible to configure the board-BIOS mode. In order to use the System clock (SYSCLK) and CPU-Ratio dip switches, the JEN (jumperless-enable) jumper has to be changed from default to jumper enable mode.

There are a few cryptic jumpers on the A7V266-E that somewhat don't make sense or are redundant. The first jumper in this category is the CPU-type frequency jumper, consisting of one solid block of 4 jumpers that, according to the manual need to be moved from default (Athlon / Duron) to Palomino if such CPU is used since "the Palomino processor will only function... after the jumpers are adjusted". Either way, we were unable to find any difference in functionality, moreover, if this setting were important, it should be placed at the front of the manual instead of being buried in the middle.

VI/O (JP1, JP2)

ASUS has a history of exceeding the memory voltages beyond the tolerable, reason enough to pull out the volt meter again and measure the real voltages. In case of the A7V266-E, everything came up as specified in the manual or close enough (2.642V instead of 2.65V), so there are no concerns here.

Promise UATA 100 / RAID

The on-board Promise PDC20265R controller can be used in either UATA 100 or RAID 0,1 mode. The default is set via jumper to ATA 100, if the additional channels are used for RAID, the jumper needs to be switched to short pins 2-3. Unfortunately, there is no possibility to completely disable the controller which causes search for devices on every boot-up and is kind of a nuisance.

Other Jumpers

Other jumpers include the selection for the Bass center setting (4-channel or 6-channel audio) Keyboard and USB Wake-Up and a jumper block to toggle between either USB#3 or the ACR as active device. As almost mandatory for any Soft-BIOS configuration, the A7V266-E also has real pins for clearing the CMOS, the description in the manual is backwards, though. Since this is important because it can lead to potential damage of the board and power supply, the Normal Operation Mode is Without Jumper, Trying to Start the System with the Jumper Shorted will, in the Best Case, Result in Boot Failure but Bears the Risk of Blowing out the System Power Supply.

Connectors

The bottom area of the A7V266-E is rather crowded with extra headers for any possible gizmo starting with the iPanel (monitoring), the AAPANEL (iPanel audio connector), a smart card connector located at the far side between PCI slots #2 and #3 as well as the industry standard extra USB, infrared and audio headers. Extra bonuses are the SMBus and the SPDIF (Sony/Philips Digital audio Interface) .

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