KT7 setup help

[Dante26]

Hello,

If anyone has a similar system like mine, please let me know where you put your cards and what are your BIOS settings. SoftMenu III has too many options, and I keep getting into trouble.

TIA

 

[Martijnos]

Hi,

what kind of problems do you have? Mine KT7 keeps locking up afther an half hour of gaming. Maybe my overclocked duron is getting into problems, but I suspect my soundblaster Live.
I have all the settings in the bios this site recommends:

Bios settings

Can you enable DMA in windows? I can't with my deskstar. When I restart windows 98se it simply turns itself to disabled.
Also have you looked at you IRQ settings? Don't put your soundblaster live! in pci 1, because it shares it's irq with the AGP. My live is in pci 2 and my network card is in 5.


My specs:

Duron 700@910 1.85, week 21 and unlocked, doesn't get hot( 38c idle, don't know about full load, have to test)
Abit kt7
128mb crucial cas 2
Creative geforce 2 gts
SB live! value
30gb IBM deskstar gxp
Toshiba dvd
Yamaha 8x/4x/24x
Realtek network card
Aopen case
Iiyama 22"
Windows 98se

 

[springdale]

Have you guys tried Paul's Unofficial KT7/Raid FAQ?

 

[Martijnos]

Yeah, I already read that one and I fixed the irq conflict between my soundcard and my NIC.
A very good and informative FAQ, but I still seem to have problems with my soundcard.
Maybe I'll reinstall win98se tonight and put the soundcard in a different pci slot. I hope I also fix my dma problem.
Should I install the 4in1 drivers version 4.25a? Maybe then I can install the busmaster driver. My system hangs now if I install that one with the 4.24 drivers.

 

[Pederv]

If you have your hard drive plugged into the raid controller, the DMA option won't work. The RAID controller is taking care of it. As for slot usage I can give you two examples that are working for a friend and myself.

AGP - Viper 770
PCI1 - Empty
PCI2 - SB Live
PCI3 - Empty
PCI4 - 2706 SCSI Controller
PCI5 - NIC Card
ISA - MODEM

AGP - ASUS 6600
PCI1 - Empty
PCI2 - SB Live
PCI3 - Empty
PCI4 - Empty
PCI5 - NIC Card
ISA - Modem

When setting up both systems I had to make sure that MS Backup was not installed. Something about the tapedrive initialization was causing problems. Hope this helped.

 

[Martijnos]

Thanks Pederv. I also have the Live in pci2 and my NIC in pci5. That was advised at the FAQ site, so I did that. I'll do a fresh install of windows98 tonight and I have to make sure the lockups aren't caused by my processor. I'll just set it to default clock speed and play Tony hawk 2....hopefully it doesn't lock up this time...

About the dma setting, I have the Abit kt7 without the raid, so that isn't the problem. It's very frustrating when you have a nice harddrive as the IBM deskstar and it's doesn't perform well...

Can I just turn off the MS backup when installing windows98?

 

[cavingjan]

Did you enable DMA when you installed the VIA 4 in 1 driver?

 

[Dante26]

Thanks to everyone that has responded.

DMA works for me. When I installed the 4in1 drivers, I think it asked me something along those lines. I did move my Live around to keep it away from the PCI 1 slot. I fear that one of tow things is happening. Either my video card is dying, or my mb AGP is faulty.

The wbsites recommended do help setup, but I am stil running into these problems. I think I am going to purchase a new card and see if that was the problem.

 

[Martijnos]

I fixed my problems!!
Yes, I was also able to select dma with the via4in1 drivers, but it wouldn't work. So tried the seperate IDE busmaster driver. My system hang......During reboot in safe mode, I saw that my writer was in Pio4 mode in stead of UDMA. I remembered reading somewhere that when you see that, you have to turn Ultra dma off in your Bios for that particular device. So I did..Now I can select DMA with the dma tool from Via.
Sandra 2000 gives a score of 18000, still not the greatest, but compared to the 4000 I had, this is quite a improvement.

Also I moved my Soundblaster Live from 2 to 4 and no problems anymore, but I think my processor's voltage was too low yesterday. At 1.85 everything is fine and it's now running at 700@979, idle 41c and fully load with prime95 45c..not bad with a stock heatsink and fan...

Thanks for your support guys, I'm a happy man...