IWILL KK266 and M7VIG capable of BIOS upgrades to LBA 48 address ?

[RFJ]

Does anyone know if the IWILL KK266 and M7VIG capable of BIOS upgrades to LBA 48 address ?

On the company bios update sites it seems the BIOSes are too early to be usable with drives over the 137gig barrier and LBA 48 address ?

Thanks...

 

[Zepper]

Well, I found one place that shows the 8235 southbridge to be capable of supporting 48-bit LBA. Earlier than that, probably not.
.bh.

 

[RFJ]

Thanks, Zepper. So this means that the 8235 southbridge, (which should be the chipset in both of these MBs ?) will accept HDs above 137 gig with WIn2K SP4 installed ?
One could always go the dedicated HD card installation route, but it is not preferable, from this end.
I appreciate the response. Could you include the URL(s) you are referring to ?
Thanks, again.

 

[Zepper]

I just googled for it - you know google or altavista are handy tools . You have heard of them?
. It's in the description of the AOpen AK-77 mobo. The KK-266 has the 133A north so it could be an earlier south (yes, it was the 82C686/B). The 8235 (added USB 2 and ATA133 support) south appeared after (either with the KT-333 or -400) the time of the 266A north (I think the 8233 was the southbridge then). Best is to email the mfrs to find out for sure as I don't know if special support chips are required or not with the 8235. The current south is the 8237 with SATA and FW support. IAC, the only one with a chance of working is the Biostar.
. BTW, you can get an add-on card Syba at dealsonic.com for ~$22. shipped. Or if you want a better name, newegg has about the same card with the LSI name on it for about twice the $s. Silicon Image chipset on both - excellent!
.bh.

 

[RFJ]

It would seem that for about the cost of the add on card and the prospect of USB 2.0 and or firewire, one could get pretty much get a new motherboard, with the newest chipsets.
But this is good for myself and my students. The Syba seems good enough.
Thanks, again, Zepper.
RFJ
PS - without subjecting you to Googleitis, do you have a preferred AMD chip socket A type MB that you recommend ?

 

[Zepper]

I don't like to recommend without any basis. How much would you like to spend? What would be expected of it? But just fer instance... Everyday workhorse - MSI KM4M, Abit VA-10. Closer to top end and/or for running Linux (the VIA integrated video chipsets can be problematic but there are drivers for some distros), or gaming a good KT-400A or -600 based. Say MSI, Soltek, Abit. Look for the P4 Aux power connector (except for the Tyan, I'll hardly look at a mobo w/o it any more) so you don't have to have an overpowered PSU (unless you need the power for other reasons, e.g. ATI 9800 - Amp sucking video card). For serious and/or mission-critical computing, running RAID, server etc. either the Soltek KT-600 or the Tyan S-2495AN/ANRS (KT-400) - the only reasonably priced mobos that support ECC and/or registered RAM (let me know if you happen on any others out there).
. Shortly mobos based on the VIA KT-880 chipset will be out with dual channel DDR support and some other goodies (check it out at viatech.com). I expect it to kick nV around pretty good in the 32-bit Athlon market.
. For about the same for less money, look at the mobos in the Asrock line. Probably more than adequate for student knock abouts, but few of them have the P4 aux.
. As you can probably tell, I have little love lost for SiS or nV as they have never even supported ECC at the chipset level when it would cost so little to implement. But even very few of the mobos that run VIA chipsets actually pass that capability through to the user - only the two I listed do that.
. Believe it or don't - not one trip to a search engine was necessary for this mess .
.bh.

 

[Zepper]

And I was researching some info and found that the Soltek KT600 doesn't support ECC. Sorry for the misinfo. I know that I picked up that bit of info from what should have been a reliable source. Whenever I went to buy one, Newegg was OOS and I ended up getting the Tyan for about $30. more...
.bh.