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Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2001 2:40 pm Post subject:

Anyone else heard of issues with the SBLive and Via chipsets. I hadn't really heard anything about it. For monthes now I have been having Hard Drive problems. If I put my hard drive on the end of the IDE cable, it is reported as PIO mode only in Win2K. If I put it on the middle connection of the IDE cable, it works in UDMA mode. In either position, it performs quite poorly. SANDRA 2001SE usually takes around 20~30 mins to complete a hard drive test and I always score very low for a 7200RPM 20GB ATA100 hard drive(Usually below that of a 5400RPM 20GB ATA66 Drive). I recently read in a forum at HardOCP that people have been having hard drive problems with their SBLive and Via based comps. I removed my Live card, rebooted, and no fix. I reinstalled my card, but not liveware, just used the drivers included with Win2K. My game performance is way up when not using liveware. I haven't really tested it with any numbers yet, but it seems way faster. 3DMark doesn't use sound, and my score didn't really change. Anyone else ever heard of this??

Eagles may fly, but Weasels don't get sucked into jet engines!!

Toilet Drinker Joined: 08 Mar 2001 Posts: 350

ive had live cards in all my systems and all my via based systems,.if they give ya any troubles try puttin em in a different slot,.otherwise they have all worked fine

Toilet Drinker Joined: 08 Mar 2001 Posts: 350

oh,.and if all else fails,.try enabling memory hole at 15 16k in the bios,.thats what via recommends

Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2001 4:38 pm Post subject:

A reference to the VIA/SBLive problem was posted on www.2cpu.com earlier today. Apparently VIA has started a message thread collecting information.

http://boards.gamers.com/messages/message_view-topic.asp?name=VIAHardware&id=zzcws

Darryl

Big Dog Joined: 20 Oct 2000 Posts: 3689 Location: USA

Quote:

Anyone else heard of issues with the SBLive and Via chipsets. I hadn't really heard anything about it. For monthes now I have been having Hard Drive problems. If I put my hard drive on the end of the IDE cable, it is reported as PIO mode only in Win2K. If I put it on the middle connection of the IDE cable, it works in UDMA mode. In either position, it performs quite poorly. SANDRA 2001SE usually takes around 20~30 mins to complete a hard drive test and I always score very low for a 7200RPM 20GB ATA100 hard drive(Usually below that of a 5400RPM 20GB ATA66 Drive). I recently read in a forum at HardOCP that people have been having hard drive problems with their SBLive and Via based comps. I removed my Live card, rebooted, and no fix. I reinstalled my card, but not liveware, just used the drivers included with Win2K. My game performance is way up when not using liveware. I haven't really tested it with any numbers yet, but it seems way faster. 3DMark doesn't use sound, and my score didn't really change. Anyone else ever heard of this??

I've heard about several diffrent problems before

Quote:
If I put my hard drive on the end of the IDE cable, it is reported as PIO mode only in Win2K. If I put it on the middle connection of the IDE cable, it works in UDMA mode

this sounds like you have more than one problem there:

I'd start off by replacing your IDE cable with a ATA 100 compatible cable (i'm betting you'll notice some improvement)

plus try Nuxto's suggestions and hopefully everything will atleast improve.

Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2001 7:14 pm Post subject:

I have actually tried three different ATA66/100(Yes the 80 wire one) cables with the hard drive, all with the same result. I had originally assumed that I had perhaps damaged a wire on the cable after the middle connector, but alas, it happens with all the cables. I have also tried the SBLive in every single PCI slot with the same results. I haven't tried the memory hole tho. Too tired right now, but perhaps tomorrow. Another problem I have is if I install my second hard drive(Which is a 7200 RPM 20GB ATA66) drive, both drives should opperate at the ATA66 spec. I already have a DVD and CD-RW, so the HD's have to go on the same channel, which should run at ATA66. If I try and copy a file, say a 100MB, from one drive to the other. That will take between 5~10 minutes.

Eagles may fly, but Weasels don't get sucked into jet engines!!

Moderator Joined: 05 Dec 2000 Posts: 5941 Location: USA

From : http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/18267.html

Quote:
VIA has confirmed a data-damaging glitch in its 686B Southbridge chip ... and is working with mobo makers to prepare BIOS updates to fix the problem ... having a Creative Labs Soundblaster Live card in place seems to exacerbate the problem ... VIA's BIOS fix works ...

[b]I'm sitting in a magic chair ... Evil Smile

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Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2001 8:21 am Post subject:

I went the only viable solution. I used it as an excuse for a new motherboard. I now have a MSI K7T Turbo-R, and instead of using the 686B southbridge for my HD's, they are sitting pretty in a nice striping array on the onboard Promise RAID controller. My processor is also now running the 133/266 front side bus, which gave me a little performance boost as well. Once I get my 1GHz T-Bird in there(Monday!!!!!!) things will really be flying. Cheers.

Eagles may fly, but Weasels don't get sucked into jet engines!!