Follow these detailed instructions and you'll be good.
You need to go to the ASUS site under 'download' for the A8V Deluxe motherboard and get the latest bios release (using another computer of course ), which is VERSION 1008 or beta 1009.
Unzip this file and put it on an empty formatted floppy and rename it A8V.ROM and put it in your floppy drive.
You are now going to use the feature called EZFlash (which you can read about in your manual too). This feature doesn't require the system to be operable, as is required if you used the conventional DOS boot flash utility method.
With the computers power completely off clear the bios by moving a jumper on your motherboard called CLRTC from pins 1-2 to pins 2-3 for about 15 seconds and then move it back to default pins 1-2. I found it wasn't necessary to remove and replace the battery, but you can do that too if you wish.
Now turn on the power of the power supply and then the front panel power switch and then immediately press and hold <ALT + F2> until you hear the floppy disk loading. If you get the nice lady reporting "System failed CPU test", you've failed and you have to start over by clearing bios again and then carry on trying to get EZFlash to work. It's a bit finicky with regard to when you press <ALT + F2> to get the floppy to start reading, but you'll get it. It would seem that as the system starts Post and before it finds a fault is the key time that EZFlash can be launched with the <ALT + F2> interrupt. Make sure your keyboard and floppy are installed correctly. This means the floppy cables white stripe pin 1 is up on the motherboard and 'usually' left on the rear view of the floppy drive.
Once the floppy starts clicking and reading, the VGA monitor screen will now show your flashing progress by saying floppy found and erasing bios and flashing new bios etc and then the computer reboots when successful. Again, you can read in your manual the exact wording of what the EZFlash reports on your screen smile.gif
Once it reboots and you get past the post reporter and it tells you to hit DEL to enter bios edit mode - do so. This will allow you to make changes you want to make to the bios, like making the floppy the 1st device to boot from, and if you have a 3400+ to change the HT speed from 1000Mhz to 800MHz.
Now save and exit bios and when it reboots it will go to floppy where you have your disk utility to format and partition your SATA or IDE drives etc.....
