Something interesting I discovered about my FIC 503 +

When I first got my FIC 503+ in November of 98 I ran a 233MMX with 64 megs
of SDRAM ..Windows 98..two ULTRA Seagate master / slave and two CD ROMs
Master slave..NOT one problem. for six months

Then in May 99 I upgraded my Network...I added a 98 slot 1 box and made the
503 my NT server. I pulled one of the Seagate ULTRAs and installed  NT
server ...98 dual boot setup. This is my  server...I setup  98  SE2 to play
an occasional network game and because I have not had good luck with EZCD
Creator 3.0 in NT  I wanted to boot to 98 when I burned a CD.  Since the
change I have had no problems with NT but no end of problems with 98 or 98
SE2.

I tried switching every card...changed the hard drive....changed the CD
Reader. Tried 98 ...98 SE2....tried patches....upgraded to a AMD K62 400
with 128 megs of Micron P100.....flashed to the latest BIOS .....nothing
worked. If any thing ......I made it worse.

Then about a month ago ...quite by accident .....I stuck a slave on the
Primary Master to move some files that I had copied from a clients PC
..this happens to be the same Primary channel setup I used when I first got
the board.    With that slave in place ALL my 98 problems immediately
disappeared . I formatted the 98 partition and installed a new copy of 98
SE2 and for the first time since the switch everything went smoothly.  No
patches ...nothing special .....except I did have to disable CPU
caching  in the Bios when I upgraded to the K62 400 ........ but this is a
known issue with the FIC 503 + and K62 chips.

I have been running like this for a month now without  a single problem.
The 506 is back to being a stable solid 98 machine....as long as the
primary slave is in place ! !

m

*********************************************************

 >I'm planning on upgrading my system to an AMD K6-2/450 with a FIC 503+
 >motherboard.  This motherboard also supports SIMMs for RAM memory as well as
 >on this matter, I'm interested to know if there is going to be a stability
 >problem. and what type of a performance impact (degradation) I can expect by
 >using my existing slower memory.
 >
 >*********************************************************
 >
 >I can warn you I have found that this FIC board has compatibility issues with
 >Windows98/98Se.  They seem to work fine with Windows95/OSR2...  but,
 >the problems I have seen are hard to dismiss.
 >
 >I sold a lot of these boards last fall and this spring, but then when clients
 >began to upgrade to Windows98...  and then 98SE, the problems became
 >real obvious.
 >So far, I have pulled three of these boards due to issues with Win98 and
 >replaced them with other brands of motherboards.
 >
 >In trying to keep the use of your old simms, you may regret compatibility
 >issues that will arise...  unless you can stay content with Win95, NT or
 >any OS except Windows98.
 >
 >                Bob Wright

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