ASUS S-presso SFF System Review Posted!

[Donny]

Just bought a S1-P111, I think it's a nice machine.

However, I ran into a couple of annoyances in the Home Theater software:

- I would like to get rid of the Toolbar and the Control Panel. The auto-hide function just makes them jumpy, is it possible to make them invisible permanently?

- When selecting a video with OK, it starts in the lower left corner preview area. Is there a way to make it start full screen?

Thanks in advance for any help.

[jazz]

Ok, hi there, just joined the forum so pretty new I guess. I received my S-Presso today and I have two problems. Building the thing up was a breeze (apart from getting of the front but I got the hang of it now. The bad stuff is this.

1. First the thing booted nicely and my problem was that I could not get the installation for instant on to start. It started loading the installation menu which I was gonna be able to choose a language in and then set it up. It never got there though, stopped with a blinking cursor in the upper left corner.

So I read through all the good stuff you all put together and thought that the VGA mode might cause the problem. Changed that in the BIOS to 800/600 (was on 1280/1024) and that's where problem number two kicked in.

2. After I did the system booted nicely two times and I just wanted to set it to 640/480 when it totally halted on the ASUS splash screen. Nothing happened. Had to press the power button for five seconds to turn it off. After that I've not had a single normal boot and thus I'm not able to get into the BIOS.

If one of you could help me out or point me in (a) direction it would be great because it is really freakin me out now.

P111, Maxtor 200GB Serial ATA, P4 3.0, IDE Optical (asus)

Tanx, regards, Jazz.

[rolfeilert]

Hello JAZZ:


Do the spresso pass the POST test ?
(I guess so, since u see the splash screen!)

Do you got any beeping codes?
Do you use the SATA?



rolf

[rolfeilert]

HAve you reset the BIOS?

TAke out the batterty, and move a jumper (descr in man)

SOme told me that some Asus boards needs to be hold reset around 5minutes to make make the reset valid, because the chip is not decharging.


thanks

[NULix]

Hi to everybody. The review for S-presso P-111 was perfect.
Well here is my problem with S-presso P-111.

The fans of the CPU and the chassis don’t work all the time. When I power on the pc the CPU fan starts to work but it stops immediately and the chassis fans are trying to start but they don’t. They start sometimes when I enter the Windows but they stop whenever they want. Although the fans don't work the temperature of the CPU increases very slowly.

Excuse me for any mistakes but I am from Greece and I don’t speak English very well.

[Geneve]

Well, at least i found a good forum of Spresso. I'm from Spain.I've bought it some weeks ago. Still I'm testing but I have some conclusions:

Instant On the TV is poor. And the audio has troubles with stereo or dual. With mono is correct. I hope it gets a new version to improve better the performances. Someone knowns where is the website who develops that program??

Intervideo Home Theater with the TV catch a lot of bad signal channel. And three important channels didn't save in the scanning channels beside you can see those channels in images when do the process of scanning. Is there anyway to edit the favourite channels and discard the bad channels?? In some file configuration editing with the notepad??

So I decided to find an alternative program for to see the TV. Thanks to my luck, in leadtek you can download winfast pvr. But unfortunately, that program don't find the video device for to record and see TV in PAL mode. But radio, curiously work and detect the video device. I've had installed the latest drivers. An now I'm waiting a response from leadtek.. Someone had had this problem?? Any solution??

By the way i've found another program of TV called Chris TV 4.20 and with this work properly and catch all the important channels. But is shareware. Now i've installed the lite version which is freeware and works perfectly even you can operate with the remote control. But the professional is a good chance to have it.

The PSU gets a bit hot when you touch at the back. Is that normal??

In http://www.cmdtools.com I found a command that permits open and close the optical drive. Because the button is a bit tough and when you want to close the tray is a bit annoying to press the button cause the open tray.

Also in http://lists.gpick.com/pages/Hard_Disk_Tools.htm yuo can find several programs about hard disks. I choose the Hard Disk Indicator (there are severals, but i prefer this), for to see the led indicator of activity. And it is very simple.

Hoping that S-presso be a good barebone and takes long time duration.

See you soon.

[Geneve]

For the people to have some references:
3,2 Ghz Intel (Prescott) socket 478 800FSB Mhz 1MB cache
1 Gb DDR 400 Mhz (two modules of 512 MB) Kingston
Maxtor Diamond serial ata 200 MB (on serial ata 1)
DVD-A09 Pioneer Black 16X (on master IDE 2)

Futher on I will telling more things about this barebone, because I need more time for testing things

[jazz]

Hi Rolf,

Tnx for the responses above on my instant freeze problem. Little update. I send the machine back on monday because it just wasn't something to be solved. I tried your suggestions but to no succes. Just installed a new one. And voila it works. Same BIOS settings and same hardware to put in there.

Now I'm finally going to enjoy the little bastard (if nothing else stops me that is. I'll keep you posted. Just my two cents...

1. If using serial ATA make sure that:
a. You but the Optical drive on the second IDE port.
b. Set the IDE settings to compatibility mode (not enhanced) and to "secondary P-ATA and S-ATA".

This is al very crucial to making the instant on CD to install.

2. Don't know for sure as I just got it to work but I believe that the Instant on software needs a resolution of 800/600. Had a little hickup just now and that went away when setting this resolution in the BIOS.

Kind regards have fun,
Jazz.

[Ciccioniti]

Ciao everybody!! First of all my congratulations and all my respect for the author of this review!!
I'll receive my "coffee" in a couple of days and I - of course - will come back to let you know about it. But I have already one practical question: with Instant On you can play DVDs, mp3s and CDs without starting the OS. OK, this is quite clear but if I want to play for instance a mp3 which is on the HD or to have a photo on the screen which is also on the HD, then Instant On won't work, isn't it?

[rolfeilert]

Thanx to jazz, for his contribute.

I got a message from the repair pople, that the error was caused by a "defect RAM chip"!!!!!.

Ok it was a cheap Corsair unbuffered, but a little strange though.

I did try to tweak the RAM settings in BIOS, but don't know if this had any impact on the failure.

Any comments ?