ChicagoDave wrote:
Hi,

I just picked up an ASUS A33 DAV center on Ebay. It is a compact unit
with a built it in sound system and two tuner cards. It isn't all
that well powered for HD, but to be honest, I'm not all that concerned
with that. Mainly I want it for it's DVR capabilities and SD is fine
for me, really.

Here's the thing, it shipped with no OS. It has HDMI and S-Video
outputs, but no SVGA out. I'm not sure how I'm going to get this
thing built. Plugging in the S-Video into my TV gives me no signal,
and I'm guessing HDMI will do the same. It seems like the system
needs an OS before it will know how to run those other outputs...but I
can't get the OS going until I can see what the thing is doing.

If anyone has any experience working with these, or any insight, I'd
greatly appreciate it!

Thanks so much in advance.


Dave

Hmmm. Only one manual offered, and it is "Traditional_Chinese_Manual.zip".
The pickings are pretty slim looking. Almost like this was intended for
their home market.

http://support.asus.com/download/dow...n-us&model=A33

But all is not lost. Go here. (Note - packet loss to Asia is high right
now, causing the download rate with this particular server, to be crappy.
Use this directory, just to get some file names. Don't try to download
stuff here.)

ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/asus/DigitalHome/DAV/A33/

Then, tack the name of the file, like "MCE_Ext_V104.zip", onto the
link the regular download server would use. This might run faster.
I tried this one, and it worked. (Inside the ZIP, it says "Vista"
and it is a multi-language installer.)

http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/Dig...E_Ext_V104.zip

Since I don't read Chinese, traditional or otherwise, I can only
go by the smell of what is in that download directory. It
uses Vista MCE, so either there is a Vista CD in the box, or
you provide some version of Vista that has MCE separately. I
see two pieces of media shown as part of the package, so look
for your CD/DVDs.

If the machine has a BIOS, it should be displaying a 640x480 BIOS
screen on some output. It doesn't have to be completely dead
at startup.

Just a guess,
Paul