FIC K6-2 VIA problems

[kind-of-blue]

Oh my goodness, first experience with AMD is a bad one.
I have a friend who wanted me to upgrade his smoking (literally) Cyrix PR200 to a K6-2 and a FIC mobo (Fry's special 3 months ago).
I managed to get the system up and running after a new windows 98' install and after applying the Via busmaster patch and then the onboard sound divers from the FIC install disk.

Everything seemed to be running fine (albeit slow) until last week when his sound started going out. The sound will work fine for a little while but then goes kaput and requires a reboot to restore the aduio.

Thing is now the machine randomly forgets which drivers are installed and resets the BIOS after reboot. Also I can tell the BIOS resets becasue the Award BIOS Virus protection appears even though I know it was never enabled enabled in the BIOS.

Has anyone any ideas what might be causing such erratic behavior? Could the mobo have gone bad, or maybe the BIOS ROM? How about a wicked computer gremlin?

His specs:
K6-2 500, FIC socket 7 w/onboard audio
128 PC100 RAM
Tnt2 M64 (yuk) with 32MB RAM
Caviar 3.2gb HD
32x cd and 56k Pci modem

 

[Edsel]

The onboard sound on the FIC 503A motherboard is really crummy. If you do a search for the motherboard on Dejanews you won't find many folks who didn't eventually just disable the onboard sound and install a PCI card. I certainly gave up on it after it sounded like a bowl of Rice Crispies whenever I turned up the volume.

Make sure you have installed the VIA IRQ steering patch. The VIA busmastering drivers cause more people problems than the default Windows 98 drivers. I'd uninstall them and see if that helps.

I had trouble using a TNT and a similar FIC motherboard, the FIC VA503+. This is from the Unoffical VA-503+ Support Page FAQ:
Now, as far as 32MB TNT2 Ultra cards and the upcoming Nvidia GeForce based cards are concerned, the following cryptic blurb recently appeared in the Official FIC FAQ:

"Q: What kinds of AGP I can use for PA-2013, or VA-503+ board?(10/19/99)
A: There are more and more high-end AGP device rolled out to market now, except our previous warning of VooDoo3 3000/3500 with PA-2013 PCB 2.0, here we suggest in general that do not implement AGP device with on board memory more than 16MB, and do not waste 4X mode AGP devices on it."

Since this suggestion comes directly from FIC I guess the answer is that TNT2 Ultras and the like are out.

Still, a number of people seem to be using these cards successfully. I'm not sure what's going on.

 

[kind-of-blue]

Hey man thanks for the help. I was getting ready to toss the whole thing. I'll see what happens after I apply the newer BIOS and make some minor adjustments via the link you provided.

 

[kind-of-blue]

Well everything seems to be ok, I uninstalled the VIA drivers and reinstalled them in the order suggestd, except now I can't get any sound. Pulled a good PCI generic yamaha card from an old P200 that I had setup in the kids room, and OS autodetects and installs drivers except one is got the banana yellow exlamaition point. Any ideas?

 

[StickHead]

Umm...It's a FIC, it's supposed to have problems.

FIC(Fix It Constantly)

 

[kind-of-blue]

Well duh. You know if its not FIC, it just might work.

Like I said before, my buddy made the decision. Not the most up to date on component selection. I've already gave him my spiel, not that it helps the current situation....