RECALL!!!!!

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COME ON GUYS, VIA OF GERMANY JUST ADMITTED TO THE FLAW IN THE 686B SOUTH BRIDGE. READ ABOUT IT AT

VIAHARDWARE.COM

IT IS THE CASUE OF ALL OUR HEADACHES!!!! WE BOUGHT NEW MOTHEREBOARDS THAT WERE JUNK, AND WE DESERVE COMPENSATION!!!!! SIGN THE PETITION TO GET A RECALL STARTED!!!! WE NEED MORE THAN JUST 5 Signatures!!!
http://www.petitiononline.com/maynoth/petition.html
 

dmcmahon

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I think this petition's a good idea but I couldn't bring myself to sign what you wrote. I don't want to vent my spleen at Asus and Via, I want action, and I don't think the language you used is, shall we say, the best way to accomplish that goal. Is it too late to change it? Here's what you wrote:

I believe that Asus/ Via have sold us lemons, Any motherboard that contain the VIA 686B south bridge is next to impossible to work with and the audio is unbarebly annoying becasue of the clicking/popping. It is impossible to use two udma100 hard drives without disabling features which we all paid for. There are lots of other unsolved issues with asus's motherboards they could care less about fixing. I want retribution for the 180 bucks I shelled out for my a7v133 peice of crap and I'm sure everyone else does also. We want asus to repair our mobo's, replace them, or a refund our money.

Here's my suggestion, what do you guys think:

We the undersigned have purchased computer motherboards from ASUS that use the VIA 686B south bridge. Since buying our systems, we have become aware of serious flaws in this chip that render our systems useless or suspect. These flaws include problems with audio continuity, the inability to use many USB devices, and most seriously of all data corruptions when doing DMA transfers on the IDE channels. In short, we believe that the VIA 686B is a lemon, and therefore so are the boards we bought from ASUS. We ask ASUS and VIA to accept responsibility for this problem and to replace our boards, repair them, or refund our money.
 
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This is a perfect example of why people should to steer clear of the whole AMD platform. Buggy mobo's with documented problems which the company admits to having yet they do nothing to help the consumers. You bought a motherboard with our buggy chipset.. ooops sorry you poor schmucks.
 
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Yes, the A7M266 uses a AMD 760 North Bridge with VIA's 686B South Bridge. Are these problems happening consistantly with most PC's using mobo's with 686B south bridge? I just bought a KM133 mobo that does use it, and am wondering what problems will I expect? Thanks!
 
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He paid $180 for an A7V133? I've never seem them close to that high. Time to get a new distributor, my friend.

dmcmahon, I do agree that your language is much better. I find it very reckless to call these boards "impossible to work with" because this just isn't the case for most users. I'm also not sure the problems are elevated to the point of a recall. If the proposed fixes from Stable, et al, do the job, then they just need to incorporate them into the BIOS and call the problem solved. That is after all how the computer industry works these days. The only recalls I can remember in recent history have been true hardware flaws that have no work around.
 
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I agree with you and think that more users would sign on. I did however sign MAYNOTH’s petition because it accurately reflects his position and mine. And as of now it is the only positive push going for an overall resolution of the plight many. Its just real hard to maintain concentration about one’s appearance while trying to climb out of the septic tank..I would suggest that the comment section of the petition be replaced with perhaps just a user column for board or ckipset type. A general description of problems could be incorporated in the body of the petition Similar to Your suggestions. I’m sure that it would be more effective or at least better received by the respective Manufactures which are, I’m sure, doing something to correct the problem. I just want make sure that I’m included in the solution.
On another note here, My system is up and running, at least well enough to work out a replacement, mainly through the efforts of others on this site..
My personal thanks the hosts of this site and those who have shared their time and knowledge with others. What a great educational institution this is. . And a special thanks to a gentleman that I have never met or talked to by the name of STEVE BENOIT who has dedicated an enormous amount of time and expertise to helping others out in this forum. I have learned more from his responses to postings of others than any manual written. ASUS and VIA should place him on the payroll!
 

dmcmahon

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Re. Steve Beniot, Via probably couldn't afford him!
Re. the petition, I agree I have the board and my system is working, so signing a statement asserting actual problems would be a lie in my case. I am very, very worried about the possibility of data corruption, however. I use my system for working with large database files and I routinely do transfers of the sort suspected to be problematic. I just can't keep looking over my shoulder every time I use the machine for such operations. I believe a BIOS fix would be acceptable; one problem is that many of the fixes floating around aren't well-documented as to exactly which OS they apply to, and in every case I've seen the OS is one of the Windows variants. I need to run Linux, as well as W2K and ME, reliably on my system. Driver-level fixes won't do for me.
I am going to put my second hard drive back in this weekend and run transfer tests under all three OSes to see how bad things are with my particular system. (I originally removed it just to make the machine quieter.) A physical inspection of the chip reveals that (based on the revision stamp) I have one of the suspect chips (begins with 13B... on the third line of the embossing).
 
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Thats scary man. Your doing exactly the sort of thing that will trigger the VIA chipset bug, transfering large files. Until there's a fix or some sort of solution to the problem (hopefully there will be soon) I would definetly make sure you back up your databases often. You dont want to lose anything that critical because of a stupid chipset flaw. It's gotta suck cause your gonna be paranoid everytime you move large amounts of data.
Good luck.
 
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the motherboard companies are working and some have released new bioses to fix that south bridge problem. just wait and see if they're successful doing it. otherwise, you can return all the stuff and get an intel system.
 
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Most motherboard manufacturers started releasing new BIOSes that are going to fix the issue with 686B southbridge so let's not panic. I understand that VIA may not have the best record as a chipset manufacturer but they still provide almost decent chipsets lately. It is normally for the companies to make a mistakes sometimes - the competition in semiconductor business is very tough and companies are sometimes rushing the products to the market. Also motherboard manufacturers are guilty too since they prefer to use VIA products without performing enought tests of the product instead of using more expensive chips (like 766 for example - I would prefer if my board uses only 761+766 instead of 761+VIA686B and I am ready to pay a premium price for it but I still has to see board with 766 instead of 686).
I have to admit that I really would prefer if AMD start making their own chipsets (keep also in mind that 686B is used in Intel motherboards too) so that they do not depend on 3rd party companies like VIA. Anyway if there is not a new BIOS released for your board feel free to return it to the board manufacturer.
Regards,
menads
 
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<<I understand that VIA may not have the best record as a chipset manufacturer but they still provide almost decent chipsets lately.>>

Almost decent chipsets? Tell that to the guy that may loose his databases.
This is a potentially very serious bug and shouldn’t be taken lightly.
AMD better pray that this type of thing doesn’t happen when they enter the server market because if it ever did, it could be disastrous to there reputation. The server market takes platform stability and reliability very, very seriously. Could you imagine having to tell your CEO that you lost the payroll database for 5000 employees because the server you bought had a bug in it. Yeah, time to start looking for a new job.
 

carlbeck

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They may have admitted they have problems BUT: Check this out:

www.realworldtech.com/page.cfm?ArticleID=RWT042201222938

There is enough blame to go around to more than one source. Have you removed your Sound Blaster to see if the problem goes away? Complexity of Hardware and Software in our systems today prove there is no such thing as Black and white. The grey area proves that if your primary objective is stability, buy hardware that is 6 months to a year proven.
 

volton

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Can someone actually tell me if it has happened to them /???

Because every report ive heard about the ASUS A7V 133a has been excellent .

" overclocking = better value "
 

Kronos

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Those with IWILL KK266 boards have a BIOS Upgrade available for the transfer bug on the IWILL site.

I want to die like my Grandfather...in my sleep...not screaming in terror like his passengers.
 

dmcmahon

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Well, it hasn't happened to me but there's a whole thread over on viahardware.com that's full of people that have, so I have to believe it's real.

This weekend I put back my spare HDD on the secondary IDE channel. I was reminded of why I removed it in the first place (noise!). I then ran transfer tests using a 500M file under ME, W2K, and Linux, all while playing a 1-hour mp3 using WinAmp or the Real player through to my SB Live! In other words, I was laughing at death! I had to use a very large file because the huge amount of memory on my system was skewing the results, since smaller files would just get cached in RAM.

So, the result is that after 4-5 transfer attempts under each OS, checksumming the file each time, there were no errors. I did get some dropouts in the audio when the disks were heavily loaded. The dropouts are of 0.5-second duration and were expected. Actually I was pleasantly surprised that they occurred only on Linux, though I am able to reproduce them under ME and W2K if I transfer to a slower device.

Both drives were masters on each of the two IDE channels. Under all three OSes, as far as I can tell from the device manager, both drives were running in UDMA mode. The main drive is a 40G ATA100 Fireball, but the spare drive is only ATA66 - not sure if this would make much difference or not.

My CD drive, where I do a lot of the backups, is not running in DMA mode. Given the suspected problems, I may just leave it in PIO mode -- I don't need speed from it, just reliability (my games are all on the hard drive).

So, I don't know why I'm so lucky. I have the exact parts that everyone's b|tching about, and no problem since installing the 1004 BIOS and the VIA 4-in-1. Your mileage may vary.

Doug
 
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Hey!
don't forget to keep reposting. to be sucessuful you must keep this drive out in front and in their faces....