Once again.... Abit is a major let down for me.

[Lehmann]

WetWilly, I have to say thanks again. I never thought that "Try Other Devices" would be related to the RAID controller, and once I enabled that it boots off the RAID controller just fine, after it tries my floppy and cdrom drives first.

Maybe you have an answer to my other question too. I'm trying to determine the absolute best way to arrange my four atapi drives on the controller. My PIO3 zip, my PIO4 dvd, my PIO4 cdr, and my ULTRA33 cd. Right now I have my dvd as master and zip as slave on the first channel, and my cdr as master and my cd as slave on my second channel. The most important thing to me is cdr reliability. It's a 4x hp drive. Do you think I have it set up the best possible way?

 

[WetWilly]

We'll give it a shot
There are several possible permutations, so I'll give you what I think is probably the best config for your controllers with some caveats:
1) IDE3(RAID channel 1) - Both hard drives (I'll assume they're ATA/33/66/100)
2) IDE4(RAID channel 2) - CD-R
or depending on how you use the hard drives,
1) IDE3(RAID channel 1) - First/boot hard drive
2) IDE4(RAID channel 2) - Second hard drive & CD-R

3) IDE1(VIA channel 1) - Ultra33 CD-ROM
4) IDE2(VIA channel 2) - ZIP & DVD

Here's why:
1) RAID/ATA ports - put both hard drives on the same channel unless you're doing a lot of copying between the drives or tend to access both drives simultaneously. In the alternative, you can put one drive on a chain with the CD-R. The HP CD-R shouldn't slow the hard drive, but I'd use HDTach to verify it doesn't. If you do this, make sure the CD-R doesn't use the hard drive on the same chain as a source/buffer for burning. I tend to prefer having the CD-R on its own channel, so there's no impact on using any hard drive or other CD/DVD-ROM device as a source. Once the hard drives are attached to the Highpoint, you shouldn't have a problem using the CD-R there as well. You may also need to go into the Highpoint BIOS and set the device transfer type for the CD-R there if it doesn't autodetect. If the CD-R doesn't work, try the Ultra33 CD-ROM on IDE4 instead, and put the CD-R by itself on IDE1 or IDE2.
2) Ultra33 CD-ROM on IDE1 - since I'm not sure as to whether the older PIO devices will affect the Ultra33 CD-ROM (shouldn't but you never know), I'd keep it on a separate chain. If the Zip is slowing down the DVD-ROM, put the DVD-ROM on the same chain as the Ultra33 CD-ROM. There are a couple of CD-ROM benchmark programs out there you can use to bench the DVD-ROM attached with the Zip vs. with the Ultra33 CD-ROM.

Like I said, there's definitely some flexibility there, so see what's best for you. My personal principle is to avoid chaining heavily used devices. With newer IDE devices this theoretically isn't necessary, but I like to do it just the same.

Good luck.

 

[WetWilly]

DaddyG,

<< Willy, you should my posts WHEN THE MEDICATION BEGINS TO WEAR OFF !! >>

I have, and I've done my best to stay out of those threads. In fact, I won't even mention Arctic Silver vs. Phase Change Thermal Compound.

Oops

 

[WetWilly]

And now back to my regular half-hearted attempt to defend the undefendable, i.e. Abit ...

<<
Not speaking for Jonny, but the design of the KT7 with 3 phase power, overclocking support in the bios and active chipset cooling are all very positive >>

I have to agree with you there. Believe me, I've tended to avoid Abits because the the 1.01/1.1 syndrome, i.e. let's ship a million rev 1.0s to find out what doesn't work, then fix it, then fix it again. I've used Abits back to their 486 boards (which didn't even have their name on them) and they've worked pretty well for me. Admittedly I don't see hundreds and thousands of particular boards like jonny, which is why I value his viewpoint. And their problems with mice and keyboards which I believe go back to their LX boards (the LX6) no less are inexcusable. But my KT7 has been more stable than some BX boards I've seen, and definitely better than the Tyan Trinity 400 I tried. And it's running a 115MHz bus with memory at Host+33MHz, CAS2, Turbo, 4-way interleave and all settings to the max with Apacer PC133 CAS3 RAM. SiSoft Sandra 2000 shows memory benchmarks of 562 CPU/653 FPU at 978MHz, so those BIOS settings are genuine. Decent RAM, yes, not not HSDRAM or anything exotic. But there aren't a whole lot of KT133s out there running at 115MHz stably, or at all for that matter, and this KT7 is, and it runs all day long without crashing.

<< BUT ABITs idea of quality is 'Send us back our defective board and $25 and we'll send you another' >>

But, very unfortunately, Abit can get away with this. It is reprehensible that Abit does this to resellers. I'd understand if they did this to end users, since the first line of warranty service should lie with the dealer. However, it's simply Economics 101. Abit boards are getting Editor's Choice awards all over the Internet, meaning they're one of the hottest boards around, meaning people want them. You're a dealer - do you say:

1) &quot;They charge $25 per board for an RMA and 5% of the boards are bad, so we're not going to carry them and turn away a lot of customers&quot;,
2) &quot;Per 100 boards it's going to cost us $125 in RMA costs plus, say, $200 in labor/overhead to process 5 RMAs per 100, so we'll carry them but mark them up an additional $5 per board to cover increased RMAs?&quot;, or
3) &quot;If jonny in Tech support has so much time to spend on AnandTech and writing a weekly column, let's start carrying Abit and keep him busy with RMAs&quot;

I'd guess from the number of places selling the KT7 that #2 is the popular choice.

<< Quality doesn't cost, if they cared, they would analyze EVERY failure and accept ZERO defects as the only measure. >>

But again, unfortunately, quality isn't everything. Look again at the KT7. I would tend to doubt that Abit's quality issues are having a major impact on Abit's sales, particularly of the KA7 and KT7, and I'd even dare say the upcoming VP6. From jonny's view, they are definitely valid issues; from an end user's point of view, there are other considerations:
1) Features - as an example, I absolutely needed a KT133 board with an ISA slot. That left the Abit KT7 and the Epox KT-8XA (or whatever). Both had 6PCI/1ISA/0AMR configurations. The Abit has multiplier manipulation, SoftMenu, and a power circuit theoretically capable of handing unreleased Thunderbirds. Epox didn't. Epox has a relatively better reputation for quality. It wasn't much of a stretch to pick the Abit.
2) Design - I was swayed by an interview with a PR guy (yes, I know) from Abit. He said they had a 22-year old wiz kid designing their boards - his first was the KA7, second was the KT7, and his third is the VP6 dual Coppermine. Abit and the KA7 at least give you a shot at running, or more specifically, pushing a Slot A Thunderbird - many other mfgs simply say &quot;not supported&quot;, and the VP6's preliminary benchmarks show it seriously kicking the Microstar 694D dual. With that track record, I'd take a chance on the KT7.
3) Possibility of getting a bad board - I'd simply return it to jonny and let him RMA it to Abit and send me a new one. Besides, if I didn't how would he make a living?

While, I repeat, I'm not a staunch &quot;Abit kicks everyone else's ass&quot; defender, you can't make a blanket statement and say that all of their stuff is crap, either. Especially not with PCChips around. Now there's crap. But that's another thread

 

[DaddyG]

Willy,

I don't think I ever said that ABIT is crap, I leave that to Russ. I really like what ABIT has done with the KT7, I too hold onto ISA devices. But, quality is also about ATTITUDE, believe me, I've been around since dirt and adopting a ZERO Defects policy AND investigating every failure, just can't be beat. The up-front cost is nothing compared to the benefits down the road.

 

[jonnyGURU]

<< 3) Possibility of getting a bad board - I'd simply return it to jonny and let him RMA it to Abit and send me a new one. Besides, if I didn't how would he make a living? >>



This is why my hatred of any given product with greater than a 3% rate is that of the the consumer w/ the bad product X10!

 

[SammieC]

Well I admit when I saw the topic, I was unsure whether to read it or not. But I did and personally I am kinda dissappointed with Abit.

Like other semi non-techies, I too looked at the reviews and the somewhat newfound stability and subscribed to the Abit overclocking prowess.

But with several people of greater knowledge, the board seems to be unstable and poorly made. I too have this problem, but related it to my general inexperience with these items.

Thanks for all the discussion and explanations as they have come in very handy. Hopefully my board will be running stable and fairly soon. It seems this thread had discussed a lot of my problems which is related to that damn controller and the setup. In all actuality, I probably have a bad board.

Rma and 25$ is ridiculous.


Keep it up!

 

[SammieC]

Off the kt7 raid topic a bit, I am having the hardest time getting a bp6 to boot from a drive sitting on the 66 controller. Being new to this board and the KT7 Raid, this is probably a stupid problem, yet I can't get it done.

The drive an Ibm 30gig 7200 ata 100 will boot normally off the IDE controller but as soon as its on the Hpt controller it just stops at the verifying &quot;DMI pool&quot;. The boot sequence is set in the board bios and also the Hpt bios.

Anybody help me on this dumb problem?

Thanks....

 

[DaddyG]

Jonnyguru.... the ABIT RMA center of the Universe !! Hear yea, Hear Yea, Hear Yea, by Royal Proclamation, all bad ABIT boards are to be returned to Jonny forth with. He requests three rolls of Rolaids be sent with each board.

 

[jonnyGURU]

I was talking to the bossman today because I never did see my replacement Abit board and asked him why we are now offering 1 year instead of 60 days on the warranty. He told me that we have a new supplier (YEAAAAAAAH!!!!!!).

He's trying to get them directly from Abit, but he tells me that everyone he's talked to there sounds like they are &quot;pure evil&quot; (his words, not mine).

I thought that was amusing and had to share!

 

[Rawdog]

Well, I'm having my share of problems. I have the KT7-RAID and was hoping to run RAID 0, but it appears that just about anytime I access a drive connected to IDE4 the system hangs, even it I'm not attempting RAID. And I noticed that I'm not the only one. On usenet, there was several other people discussing the exact same problem with IDE4.

So should I RMA the board. I suspect I will have the same problem with a new one. I wish I could just return it for the non-raid version and get a promise card. I was really looking forward to increased drive performance.

Anybody got any ideas?

Rawdog

 

[pyr]

i HATE Abit. this is a guy who has built over 30 computers using Abit boards over the past 2 years. So far, about half of those have died and had to be replaced or are acting goofy. I am so sick of the crap they put out as a product. they say '1 year warranty' yeah right... contact them and they tell you 'return it to where you bought it' odd because most places only will take returns for 30days. SCREW YOU ABIT! I am done with them. the performance is great and the features are fantastic, but they die so often it is annoying.