VIA & 686b patch

[Guest]

Dear All,

I would liek to try to clear up as much of this issue as possible for you. First of all, to fix all known problems with compatability with SBL and 686b KT133/KT133A chipsets, we have released our 4in1 drivers 4.31 available from http://www.viatech.com/drivers/index_new2.htm#3

These drivers do fix the crashing issue when trying to transfer large files between IDE channels with a SBL installed.

The data corruption issue that you have talked about is not a 686b bug, but a bug caused by incorrect modifications by motherboard manufacturers attemtping to fix the SBL issue.

I know a lot of people have spent a lot of time researching this issue. I would like to thank them for their efforts. The information that VIA collected from VIAhardware.com's old forums assisted us to get this patch released.

If any of you do a re-install, install the new 4.31 4in1 drivers then your SBL and drivers and still experience problems, OR if you have problems without an SBL, please contact your motherboard manufacturer for a bios update. If that fails, please email me. You can post it in here, just please notify me or put my name in the thread title so I don't miss it.

Regards


John Gatt
VIA Technologies,Inc

 

[ozmol]

Bump

People should be made aware of this. Thanks for the info.

Does anyone know if this problem has ever cropped up on an A7M266 board?

 

[HATEWINDOWS]

great , i will try it, nice to see an apology for the hundreds of hours of wasted time spent trying to sort this issue, and correcting corrupted files , and reformatting and installing drivers, more drivers , and more F****** drivers.
It better work, or i trash the board and go intel.
What are you going to do for us to make up for these losses by the way ?
(i get data losses without SBL , even with small files)

 

[HATEWINDOWS]

I have installed the new 4.31 drivers , sorry .....it is better , but THERE ARE STILL PROBLEMS HERE>

Before , my printer would hang after printing 2 - 3 pages,after installing the new drivers, it prints about 8 - 10 pages,...then it hangs, it will only print again if i reboot.
I also get file corruption with only small file transfers between drives,and saving to FDD.

My system also crashes when opening or closing programs randomly, Win2K asks me to debug the corrupted file.

The problems have been reduced about 80%, but that is not a fix.

I really think you guys need to do a recall here before it totally destroys your name.
If you had recalled earlier people would respect that, but you keep denying that a problem exists, give yourself an uppercut.
(by the way..i am not using SBL)

 

[Guest]

No SbLive in my config. Applied all the patches and it still craches on dvd playing. Recall?

 

[btvillarin]

(To both esjani & hatewindows)
Post all of your system specs, operating system, and any drivers/patches/fixes you have installed.

<i>OC...unless your computer's cheezy (is that a good rhyme?)</i>

 

[HATEWINDOWS]

AMD 1 Gig 200FSB
A7V133 , version 1.05
netcomm 56K modem
skymaster network card
western digital UDMA 100 20 gig (7200 rpm)
kingmax 512 PC 133 SDRAM
ACER CDROM 50X
ACER CDRW 8x4x32
300 Watt Aopen PS
Soundblaster Vibra sound card
Canon BJC 6200 printer
Hercules Dual TV out VGA

And yes, i removed all PCI cards but it still has problems, (though not quite so bad)
One thing more i must try, i see another poster disabled ACPI ,...i will try that and see what happens.
But really , why should i go through all this crap ?
I paid top $$$ for a quality board, why should its use be a major marathon ????

 

[HATEWINDOWS]

ps ,
installed 4.31 drivers, including raid promise.
did every update from microsoft,
did ASUS update with latest BIOS.
I am interested to know,do people who have no problems with this board have version 1.04 , or the same version 1.05 as me ?

 

[Guest]

My sysconfig.

850Mhz T-bird
Abit Kt7a, with newest official zt bios
Tnt2 pro (Elsa) with Nvidia ref, drivers 6.50
WinME
Hitachi Bx2500, DMA enabled
Quantum fireball 13 GB uATA 66
Diamond mx300 sound card, aureal ref. drivers 2048
via drivers 4.31

I think thats all, if you want to know anything else, let me know. Thanks for your help.

 

[Guest]

Excellent work John. I've got the via 694x chipset on my MSI 694d pro board (686a southbridge) and I'm very happy with it. Keep smiling.

"Cock-a-doodle-do" is what I say to my girl when I wake her UP in the morning!!

 

[dmcmahon]

I have this board and I have some USB problems, but have not (yet) experienced any data corruptions. I don't know how I can tell what version of the mobo I have; it came with BIOS 1001c, which I upgraded to 1004, if that helps. I have a GF2 MX dual AGP card, Intel LAN card in slot 2, the infamous SBLive 5.1 in slot 3, and an actiontec modem in slot 4. I have my 40G ATA100 drive on the primary IDE by itself using an 80-conductor cable, and my Zip 250 and CD-RW drives on the secondary IDE using an old-style 40-conductor cable. I have a USB mouse and an HP 930C USB printer (I have a PS/2 mouse as a backup).

I put an ATA66 hard drive on temporarily to see if I could reproduce the data corruptions, but I could not (might be because I need an ATA100 drive, might be because I need to put it on another 80-conducter cable to get it up to the UDMA modes). I do not have a DVD player so I am not able to determine if I would get smooth playback or not. MP3s play fine from the SBLive without crackling, but there will sometimes be pauses if the hard disk gets busy with something else during playback. I haven't tried burning CDs with the burner in DMA mode, either; I run it in PIO mode because that seems safer and I don't need the speed.

The only problem I seem to have is with USB. I can't seem to use the USB mouse and printer together. That is, they will work for a while, as long as I don't print too much, under Windows 2000. But under ME, if I send a large print job to the printer, the mouse will get "hung" and then won't ever come back. Sometimes a print job will also get "stuck", meaning it prints half a page and then stops, and I can't abort the job from the print manager. After this happens the only way to clear it is to shut down the system, even then during the shutdown windows complains about a task that won't respond and gets stuck during the shutdown process, to the point where I have to use the reset switch to finish the job.

I'm with you in that if this VIA chipset is fatally flawed, there should be a recall and we should get replacement boards with reliable hardware.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by dmcmahon on 05/18/01 09:16 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Guest]

Hi,

I've been reading about the KT133A DMA problem
with interest.

I have experienced problems on Solaris x86
when using a combination of SCSI and IDE disks,
on Asus A7V133 and Tyan S2390B motherboards.
The SCSI controller is Adaptec 2940U2W with two
Seagate St318436LW U160 SCSI drives attached;
The IDE drive is an IBM DTLA-307030.
System has 768Mb RAM and Athlon 1GHz CPU.

I created a 1Gb file of random byte values
on each hard drive, and concurrently on each
drive uuencoded the file then uudecoded it again;
Then it calculated the MD5 checksum and compared it to
the original file. Normally the IDE drive fails
this test on the first iteration.

The Asus board has on-board sound but I
was not using it, the Tyan has no sound at all.
IMHO this proves it is DMA and nothing to do with
sound cards as VIA are trying to make everyone
think. Will you please acknowlege the problem
properly and stop trying to pretend it is a soundcard
issue?


Ed

 

[tdean]

i agree. i have 6 of these such boards, 4 aopen ak73 pro(a) and 2 ecs k7vza and all have problems. i have read about every post on here and tried every patch and fix and they still dont perform properly. like one of the other reader posted, why should we have to go through all this to get our boards to work? i am also very disappointed in the fact these boards were so highly recommended by "toms hardware". his recommendation is the reason i bought them all. i mean, if we all can find bugs and flaws in these boards, why couldnt he?

 

[dmcmahon]

The sad thing is, what can I possibly do to protect my investment in hardware, assuming I'm willing to eat the cost of the faulty board? I have an Athlon CPU and 768M of PC133 SDRAM. Where am I going to find a board where I can reuse those same components that does <b>not</b> use a VIA chipset?

 

[tdean]

same problem here... personally, im going with the asus a7a266 board with the ali magik chipset. it apparently can take either pc-133 or ddr ram. it has slots for both, check it out.

 

[btvillarin]

I use 1.04 (from the official Asus website). I wouldn't use 1.05, because I don't think it's an official Asus BIOS.

<i>OC...unless your computer's cheezy (is that a good rhyme?)</i>

 

[btvillarin]

Did you download the official <A HREF="http://www.viatech.com/drivers/index_new2.htm#4" target="_new">USB Filter Driver 1.08</A>?

<i>OC...unless your computer's cheezy (is that a good rhyme?)</i>

 

[dmcmahon]

Yes, I have it and every other up-to-date driver.

 

[Guest]

I am still having trouble as well. I get occasional pauses in 3d applications. I think the only solution is to make my next PC (yuk) Intel based.


<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Tailslide on 06/03/01 01:58 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Toejam31]

Because of your immature chipsets and lousy quality control, I spent hundreds of hours trying troubleshoot a machine that was inherently unstable. I will never again use a motherboard that has a VIA chipset. Despite the fact that I wished to support AMD ... VIA has turned me against the entire concept of using anything except an Intel platform. I'm not made of money, my time is valuable, and I need a computer that requires a minimum of maintenance in order to function correctly. My AMD/VIA system did not allow for any of that ... in fact, quite the opposite.

I spent the better part of a year (since last July) doing research; all in the name of looking for a possible solution to the problems caused by the chipset and motherboard. It's ironic that by the time your company finally acknowledges the possibility that your product is flawed (although, with many disclaimers attached) I have already gone through my warranty company and had the entire system replaced. And so, Sir ... I don't need your patch; nor do I need to have the motherboard replaced. But I heartily recommend that anyone who has a problem with these motherboards and/or chipsets take full advantage of the recall ... or replace the computer ... and allow the manufacturer to bear the expense. One more patch isn't going to make much of difference, one way or another, in my opinion. You can beat a dead horse; but you can't make him drink.

Good day,

Toejam31

<font color=purple>My Rig:</font color=purple> <A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?rigid=6847" target="_new">http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?rigid=6847</A>

 

[Guest]

So when I go to put my new computer together, I should install the 4in1 drivers first, then my SBL card?

 

[baron]

What is a good Magik Motherboard?



I am looking at a7a266 now and will buy it, unless I find another board (without VIA). I need a board for my new computer and need it now. lol Yeah, lousy timing, but what can I do?

IMacs for the blind

 

[lamer_gamer]

Love my A7A! However, bear in mind I'm not dual booting OS's, OC'ing, or doing any real intense apps like others here. But for my purposes, which include surfing the web (cable internet), and 3D gaming, I'm real happy! Good luck!

My brain has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down

 

[Porkloin]

I read something about Win2K SP2, which had Win2K's drivers up against the 4 in 1 and it seemed to do better. Granted, it was the 4.29 4 in 1, it may be worth while to try it with Win2K SP2 and see how that works for you.
Lookee here: http://www.2cpu.com/Software/win2k_sp2_via/win2k_sp2_via_1.html

Sweating like a rancid chunk of pork