Installation

The AT7 installation procedure is standard, except for the fact that you will need to use the I/O shield provided by Abit which fits most cases, but not all! You may find the shield difficult to install into your case, especially if your case requires I/O shield screwing. Fortunately that's a small price you have to pay for extra features. The software installation is complex because you have to install drivers for all the devices on the board. The LAN port uses Realtek RTL8100B, the audio part uses Realtek ALC650, the USB 2.0 uses VIA VT6202, the IEEE394 uses TSB43AB23 and the RAID controller uses Highpoint HPT374. These are all the drivers you have to install, beside the chipset drivers. I had no problems at the installation, although I was forced by the board design to use an USB keyboard which is less compatible. Unfortunately I discovered that AT7 was not able to work with a low cost USB keyboard I had in the lab. Several keys didn't function while others displayed a different output. AT7 SoftMenu III features make the CPU installation an one minute process. I won't detail further because SoftMenu III is a known feature.

I tested the board with Linux RedHat 7.2, but I was not able to use USB 2.0 and IEEE394. For all the other devices I was able to find drivers. We were not able to test IEEE394 features in this review due to unavailability of IEEE394 external devices. As for VT6202 Linux drivers I was not able to find them on the net. VT6202 is quite a new product, Linux drivers will be probably released soon. Linux Redhat 7.2 worked well with the USB keyboard and mouse (the USB input devices support is an old Linux capability).