Paul:
As you may be aware, there are problems with many motherboards (such as
the Abit KT7A) that use 686B Southbridge chip that is part of the VIA
KT133A chipset. A discussion of the current situation can be found at:

www.viahardware.com/686bfaq.shtm.

Note that systems with Creative SBLive cards are particularly
vulnerable. When this mess first hit the fan in May, it was felt that
the SBLive was the culprit; it took a while for some of the other
problems to surface. The worst of these occurs when transferring very
large files (>100 mb) from one drive to another -- your disks can be
trashed.

Based on what I read in this and other articles on this site, and other
postings at other sites, combined with the rapidity with which new
"solutions" are announced, I don't have a warm feeling that the problem
has been resolved. FWIW, Mandrake has modified the installation routines
for Mandrake Linux 8.0 that disable UDMA modes on systems using these
chips because of the potential for catastrophic data loss.

For those of you using the earlier version (KT7) of this board, this
appears to be a non-issue as those boards use the 686A Southbridge. If
it helps any, my KT7 has been quite stable since I installed it last
fall.

Regards,
Carroll Grigsby


Paul Anderson wrote:
>
> On Mon, 18 Jun 2001 17:52:23 -0700, Mark Rode <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> >I would strongly suspect RAM. The first thing I would do is set the BIOS to
> >very conservative memory settings. If I got another lock the next thing I
> >would do is swap out the RAM. But if the locks stopped I would wait a week
> >to make sure it was OK and then I would start speeding up the settings one
> >at a time.
> >
> >Rode
> >The NOSPIN Group
> >
> >
> >>Somehow I got my system to turn back on when it freezes, BUT it still freezes
> >>every couple of hours. There doesn't seem to be a reason for it to freeze. I
> >>can watch DVD's, run it through benchmarks, and everything, but then for no
> >>reason !BAM! the computer just locks up. At first I thought the system was
> >>working, so I went into the bios and turned everything from fail-safe to
> >>optimised and it locked up just a few minutes after going into windows. What
> >>would you reccomend I do to find out what is wrong? There doesn't seem to be
> >>anything else wrong, it runs fantastic until it suddenly freezes. Like I said
> >>in an earlier message, the temp isn't very high. Any help would be
> >>appreciated.
> >>Thank you.
>
> Alright I tried swapping out memory, locked up. Tried turning off all optimisations in the BIOS (this is an Abit KT7A, lots of optimisations) lasted for quite a long time (about 6 hours or so), but still locked up. I'm kind of wondering if something (besides the CPU) is overheating (maybe the Northbridge, 7200RPM hard drive?) because after that first lock up it locked up like another three times in the next hour! Here is all the specks of my system: Addtronics 6896A Case w/ 300watt PS, 850MHz AMD Thunderbird, Monster 2 heatsink and thermal grease from ocz.safeshopper.com, Abit KT7A motherboard, Tonicom 128MB PC166 memory, Sound Blaster Live!, Matrox Millenium G450 video card, Maxtor 20GB 7200RPM HDD, and Windows2000. I'm not overclocking. Do you know of any incompatibilities or whatever between these? I belive I have all the latest drivers for everything and I just flashed the BIOS. Any ideas would be appreciated, I want to have this system working flawlessly and be able to !
optimise
> the BIOS to use the sytems full capabilities. Thank you very much.

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