I'm back!
Friday I received another Abit KT7 RAID motherboard. Thinking to myself "Abit has probably worked out the problems with my video card and scanner", I decided to install it. Besides, the board was a newer revision. It's slightly smaller, the RAID sockets are orange and the power connector is located differently. I plugged all my components into the board, and it fired up the first time. I went into the BIOS and optimized it for the hardware in my system. Then, I installed Windows 98SE and all the required drivers (VIA, Video, Sound etc...). Everything seemed to work OK. Next, I pressed the button on the scanner and scanned in a small photo. Everything worked fine. Finally, I increased the scanners resolution (600x600) and scanned the photo again. Half way through the process, I receive the following message:
Error: The scanner is not responding or calibration has failed. Please check the connection and try again.
After clicking the OK or Cancel button, I immediately get a BSOD. From there I must restart the computer. This is the exact same "issue" I had with the last KT7. I know of a work around, but it's not a very good solution. If I move my network card to another PCI slot and disable the integrated LPT port, the USB controller will move to IRQ 7 by itself. Then, everything works fine. Unfortunately, like others, I am out of IRQ's. Plus, 2 of the PCI slots will always share an IRQ with the USB controller. Thus, they are useless if I intend to use my scanner.
After some more testing and tinkering, I moved on to my video card problems. I installed 3DMark2000 and Tribes. I launched 3DMark2000 and immediately noticed some texture tearing (flashing triangles etc...). This was replicate in Tribes. It was doing the exact same thing as before. I then went into the BIOS and disables AGP 4X and Fast Writes. I launched 3DMark2000 again and noticed the problem reduce but not vanish. Again, I went into the BIOS and reduced my AGP apeture; no effect. After 3 hours of tinkering with the BIOS (trying new RAM, different drivers, etc...), I finally gave up and removed the Abit KT7 from my system. I replaced it with my MSI K7T Pro2A and everything works fine (luckily I have Ghost, so I can restore the OS in 4 minutes). As I sit here and type this message, my newly purchased KT7 sits in it's box in my closet. If it ever sees power again, it won't be in my system...