Intel Motherboards - N3700-ITX: serve HDMI problems

N3700-ITX: serve HDMI problems

Printed From: ASRock.com
Category: Technical Support
Forum Name: Intel Motherboards
Forum Description: Question about ASRock Intel Motherboards
URL: https://forum.asrock.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=788
Printed Date: 23 Dec 2024 at 3:58pm
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.04 - http://www.webwizforums.com

Topic: N3700-ITX: serve HDMI problems

Posted By: Roshi88
Subject: N3700-ITX: serve HDMI problems
Date Posted: 07 Sep 2015 at 10:46pm

Hi.

My problem is rather straight forward:

If i power on the mainboard BEFORE the TV/Monitor then i wont get a video signal, but it works just fine if the TV/Monitor was running beforehand.

Same goes for switching source on TV/Monitor, for example if i switch from HDMI1 (N3700) to HDMI2 (old WD media player) and then back again to HDMI1 the signal from N3700 will be gone forever.

Also the same if i turn off the TV/Monitor and switch it back on later: signal gone untill reboot of N3700.

This happens with latest Debian Testing x64 and with latest Windows 10 x64 and also while in BIOS so it's definitely not OS-specific (won't be fixed with a simple driver update for my OS).

Tested with 2 different TVs from 2 different brands and 3 different PC-monitors from 2 different brands. Happens on all of them. Of course i've also tested numerous HDMI cables (yes, also "high quality high-speed with ethernet" cables). Doesn't change a thing. All TVs/Monitors/cables are working absolutely perfect on different devices.

Additional information: N3700-ITX, running latest bios version (1.20) with default settings. Nothing additional is plugged in, just powercord, HDMI and keyboard.

Interesting is this: with default bios settings (legacy bios) one TV shows "Invalid Signal" while in BIOS. Strangely the OS shows up fine. If i switch to EFI (deactivate CSM and activate Secure Boot) the Bios comes up fine and the "Invalid Signal" warning is gone.

I guess there is a serious flaw / really nasty bug inside ASRock's BIOS-firmware. The HDMI-handling and handshake procedure seems completely screwed.

Hopefully somebody can help me here. I can't just reboot it everytime i want to watch something on my TV.

Replies:

Posted By: juiced
Date Posted: 16 Oct 2015 at 10:52pm

I haven't picked up the n3700 yet as I'm waiting on "hoping for" the M version. Err that and I was unaware there was debian video support for it. 'thought it was ubuntu only at this point'

But something that was mentioned somewhere here before about the embeded asrock boards is to:
-> Go in the bios and set the primary graphics to onboard
-> And set the shared memory to an actual number. - aka not auto

If I recall correctly setting the shared memory to a number forced it to fire up.

I have no idea if this will solve your issue and I can't really test it atm. Just figured I would toss it out there.

Good luck.

Posted By: iSgomm
Date Posted: 22 Oct 2015 at 12:59am

Hi,

today I have bought the card for use as NAS through openmediavault.

I have the same problem, I do not have an HDMI monitor to be connected constantly to the board and I have verified that the card does not start if it is not connected to a monitor on hdmi.

This is a serious problem for me, before I had the Sapphire pure red e350 replaced with this.

I tried to set the bios "primary graphics to onboard" and have tried all the values of shared memory from 64 to 512MB.

Unfortunately, the problem persists, without signal on hdmi the card does not start.

I have the latest bios :

1.30

9/23/2015

and I need to use the NAS with openmediavault ( latest version 2.1.17 --> Linux OMV-PSRV 3.2.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.2.68-1+deb7u5 x86_64 GNU/Linux ) booting from a USB 3 with 4 sata each 3TB in RAID5 ( with mdadm ).

This is a serious bug.

Can someone please help me ? Cry

Posted By: blacksmithy
Date Posted: 08 Nov 2015 at 7:40am

Hi,

I've encountered the same issue using latest OMV with 1.20 BIOS. It looks like that everything is ok with the board (and BIOS) itself. No booting is caused by OMV (Debian 7) GRUB version - 1.99. Upgrading to 2.02 solved the problem for me.

Good luck!

Posted By: iSgomm
Date Posted: 08 Nov 2015 at 5:56pm

Hi,
thanks for your reply.
I have grub 1.99-27 in OMV version 2.1.18 under "sde" disk ( sde is an usb disk with sde1 Linux partition Id = 83, sde2 Extended partition , sde3 Linux swap )
Can you explain how to update grub ( there is no new version through apt-get update )?
Can you explain the commands used ?
Best regads.

Posted By: blacksmithy
Date Posted: 09 Nov 2015 at 5:53am

You're right - there is no "standard" package with more up-to-date GRUB for Debian 7 (even in backports repository). My solution is not 100% safe but until now it works like a charm :) What I've done was installing GRUB package from Debian 8 (Jessie) repository.

You can do the same as follows (but at your own risk!):

Step 1: Add the following line to /etc/apt/sources.list (you can replace UK mirror with a location near you - this site contains list of local mirrors: http://linuxconfig.org/debian-apt-get-jessie-sources-list" rel="nofollow - http://linuxconfig.org/debian-apt-get-jessie-sources-list )

	deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free

Step 2: Update dependencies list with:

	sudo apt-get update

Step 3: Update GRUB package with it's dependencies. Unfortunately you have to upgrade libc-bin and nfsserver too, but until now I've not encountered any problems with it.

	sudo apt-get install --reinstall grub

Step 4: After installation comment out (or simply remove) line with Debian 8 repo from your /etc/apt/sources.list file to prevent updating another packages.

Step 5: Update dependecies list again (as described in #2) for future installations & reboot.

Additionally I've also upgraded kernel to the 3.16 and intel-microcode package using backports repository (this removes warning messages during boot). If you want you can easily google how to do it.

Alternatively, you can also try even more experimental way - installing OMV on Debian 8 as described here: http://forums.openmediavault.org/index.php/Thread/10826-Guide-Howto-install-OpenMediaVault-on-Debian-8-x-Jessie-TESTING-EXPERIMENTAL/" rel="nofollow - http://forums.openmediavault.org/index.php/Thread/10826-Guide-Howto-install-OpenMediaVault-on-Debian-8-x-Jessie-TESTING-EXPERIMENTAL/ but I've no idea how stable it is.