If you ended up here, maybe you're looking for some information related to the Asus M2V mainboard SATA controller, or perhaps you're interested in the Attansic L1 Gigabit Ethernet network device, which is the onboard network device for the M2V. If that's the case, you've come to the right place.
In the summer of 2006 I purchased an Asus M2V mainboard as part of a Windows gaming system I built for my family. When I partitioned the hard drive, I left about 40 gigabytes free so I could install Linux and dual-boot the machine occasionally. When I attempted to install Fedora Core 5, however, the installation failed, unable to find a disk drive attached to the system. This turned out to be because the 2.6.15 kernel supplied on the FC5 install disk did not support the M2V's onboard VIA VT8237A SATA controller, and as misfortune would have it, I purchased only one disk drive with the system: a SATA drive.
Undeterred by this turn of events, I began trying to find a way to get Fedora installed on the system. Ultimately, it took nothing more than a simple PCI ID change to the kernel's sata_via driver. But how do you feed a hacked driver to the installer? Well, there are a couple of ways; by using a driver disk (which I had no idea how to create), or by somehow interrupting the installer and injecting the hacked driver into the running installer kernel (which I had no idea how to do).
After a bit of learning and effort, I now have both. If you want the driver disk, it's here. If you want the "module injector method", it's here. Both methods require a floppy disk drive.
Before I purchased the M2V mainboard, I sort of assumed it would come equipped with a VIA Velocity onboard network adapter, since the board was, after all, equipped with the VIA K8T890 chipset. However, when I cracked open the box and pulled out my shiny new mainboard, I discovered the NIC was the "Attansic L1 Gigabit Ethernet" controller. I'd never even heard of Attansic before, and I pretty much knew immediately there'd be no kernel support for this NIC, but thankfully, the vendor included the source code for a Linux version of the driver on the M2V distribution CD.
This was all well and good, but as newer kernels were released from kernel.org, I began running into problems compiling the vendor driver, so I started patching the thing and saving the patches. Then I got even more ambitious and decided to submit the Attansic L1 driver for inclusion in the mainline kernel. I'd never done such a thing before and I wanted to gain the experience of preparing, submitting, and trying to maintain a kernel driver.
For more information, see my Attansic driver page.