503+ motherboard help needed

[rsales]

Chucky2,

The JE1537 has the same problem with the spread sprectrum switching to the AGP setting in bios when you curser over to it. I noticed the JE438 did it to like you said and the JE439 didn't. It is very strange. I don't think I will be buying anymore FIC boards. But when this one worked it worked pretty good for a 400.

 

[chucky2]

Well, I'm curious: How did the final install of Win98SE go? Did my patch process work, or do you still have problems?

As for FIC, I'm sadly in agreement with you. Every FIC board I've run across (admittadly a brief few) has eventually yielded a failure of some sort. The couple of Tyan boards, the one Epox, and laughably the Cal. Graph. Photon 100 HC I've used are rocks. Maybe its because the only FIC board I've dealt with is the VA-503+, which is pretty much a budget minded board.

Chuck

 

[rsales]

Chucky,
Well Win98se was on this machine before but I had like 332 orphans in the registry. So I wiped it. Well this time the install of Win98se put in acpi with it taking a irq for acpi steering. I don't remember seeing this before in the Win98se installation. Well this caused no irq's to be available for the isa sound card. I yanked the card and put in a pci so now everything is irq happy. One funny thing I noticed was after installing Win98se it didn't act the same as it use to on shutdown. I went to the Windows shutting down screen and stayed there. Shutting it off and rebooting didn't put it into scandisk. Installing the shutdown patch didn't change it. After install the other VIA patchs it now just goes quickly to a black screen with a blinking cursor. I don't get the it is safe to shut off your computer now message. Strange. I was looking for the area where you can choose the type of shutdown for Windows but don't remember where it is.

 

[chucky2]

rsales-Well, for the shudown problem, you could try the steps outlined here: http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=34&threadid=176025

As for the ACPI stuff...In the BIOS, instead of letting the computer controlling the resources, you could set it to Manual. This option is right where you tell the BIOS if the OS is Plug and Pray or not. When you set this to manual, you'll be able to assign IRQ's and DMA's to Legacy ISA devices. Assign the IRQ and DMA you want to the Soundcard it all should be good.

Chuck

 

[chucky2]

Hmmm, it seems that I'm wrong. If I remember correctly, when one first installs Win98SE, Disable Fast Shutdown is already checked. After one applies the Win98SE Shutdown patch from Micro$oft, this option completely goes away. So, since you've already installed the Shutdown patch, my suggestion directly above will not do you much good.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but for an AT style computer with and AT power supply, isn't ACPI unnecessary?

Chuck

 

[wj]

I have 2 503+ boards, one of them is at FIC now. I had to RMA it back because I installed a TNT 2 32mb card. Screw up the board, would not run any kind of video card after that. I have a 16mb banshee in the one 503+ that I have running. After sending the 503+ board back I purchase a new Slot 1 board with a celeron CPU. I don't think the 503+ boards will run any card over 16mb, must be something to do with the chip set.

Just my 2 cents on the matter.

wj

 

[rsales]

It's running a 32 meg Elsa card right now WJ.

Chucky,

That would explain why I can't find the area to choose which shutdown method Windows should use. I don't remember telling it to install ACPI. I didn't see it installed on the last installation under bois JE1537. That's why I was puzzled seeing it. I just ran 'setup' like I did before.

You know now that I have removed the isa sound card so I have no isa cards in the 503 MB. I suppose I could try going back to ME as long as the isa bridge error wouldn't cause any other problems. With no isa cards who cares if it doesn't work. Just wait for a patch.

 

[rsales]

Update:

Board is running with Win98se seems to be ok. Loaded Total Annilation and ran it for awhile to test it. After about 20 minutes Win98se said the TA program created an error. I am going to try reloading it and see if it helps. Someone elses input came to mind. He was running a AMDK6-3-450 and found he had to increase the voltage to the processor just a little to get the system stable. He wasn't overclocking. He suggested it may have been the mother board wasn't keeping the voltage very stable and the increase helped correct it. May also be some of the chips are a little out of spec and need a little more voltage to work right. This might explain why the board worked ok for FIC who ran a AMDK6-3-450 at 400 to test my board.

 

[chucky2]

rsales- Actully, I'm doing the same thing at work here.

I'd get sporadic blue screens in NT 4.0 on this -503+ (38 BIOS) and K6-3 400 (2.2Vcore stock) at 4x100. Since I've got a cut down FEP-32 on it, I just bumped the Vcore up to 2.3 and haven't had a problem since.

Did this work for you also?

Chuck