Why oh why did I buy an Abit? (long rant)

[Robor]

After a nightmare experience a while back with a BP6 I decided to give Abit one last try. I purchased a BE6-2. After running fine for about 5 months I came home from work to find it locked up. I unplugged it (no response from ctrl-alt-del or power button) and plugged it back in. Tried rebooting and it was dead. Did the usual troubleshooting (cleared CMOS, reseated CPU, RAM, cards, etc). It's dead. Will not power. I RMA it to Abit. I transfer all of the hardware into an ASUS CUSL2 motherboard and it all works fine there (using PC now).

A month later my replacement board arrives. I pull the hardware out of an 810 board that's working fine and slap them into my replacement BE6-2. Everything's set, bootup time and... Let's see, the ATA66 controller doesn't detect my 45GB ATA100 IBM HD. Slap it on the standard IDE controller and it works. Okay, sucks but liveable. Fresh load of Win98SE, all updates, add drivers, etc. All's fine until I try to add a SB16 PNP ISA card. Attempts to use the Add Hardware Wizard BSOD the system. Power off, remove the card, try Hardware Wizard w/o the card. Same problem or system locks on an hourglass. Okay, that's 2 strikes. Looks like another bad board. RMA'ed it.

Two weeks later my 2nd replacement BE6-2 arrives. Same process followed only this time my HD is detected (all same hardware as before). Cool right? Wrong, read on... Windows detects the ATA66 controller. Okay, give it the driver disk and reboot. BSOD on reboot. Check BIOS revision. Hmmm... I'm behind. Flash to newest. Grab lastest HighPoint controller drivers. Reload Win98SE from scratch (again). This time give it fresh HighPoint drivers. Reboot and BSOD again! GRRRR! I give up. Slap the HD on IDE1 as Master and CDROM on IDE2 as slave. Disable Highpoint controller in BIOS. Boots Windows fine.

Why this story? Well, after 3 motherboards I'm pretty fed up with Abit and I just feel like venting. Call it a warning, call me an idiot if you want. All I know is I've NEVER had so much trouble with a brand of motherboard before. I've used ASUS (my favorite), Shuttle, Soyo, Tyan, Microstar, Ocean/Octek, etc and never have I had this kind of frustration.

Rob

 

[pyr]

been there, done that. I will NEVER buy another Abit board again. QA is not there at all.

 

[DaddyG]

I believe that the Highpoint controller has issues with the SB16 Emulation. The trick is to disable SB16 emulation in the Device manager BEFORE the reboot after installing your Sound Card.

I wouldn't take an ABIT mobo as a gift, but this problem is known.

 

[Eug]

I don't like Abit. In fact my desktop (and laptop of course) and work desktop are all 100% Abit free.

However, the issue may be partially due to the IBM drive. My IBM ATA100 45 GB drive would not work properly in Windows 2000 on my Promise Ultra66 card on an Asus P2B BX board until I manually adjusted it down to ATA 33 with the IBM ATA utility. Windows 98 worked fine, but ONLY after I fdisked the drive using the onboard ATA33 controller. Interestingly, if I remember correctly, it WOULD work properly set as ATA66 if I used an ATA66 cable, but still wouldn't work set at ATA100. It seems Windows 2000 likes the drive's settings and the actual speed to match, while Windows 98 doesn't care as much. The point here is that despite claims to the contrary, ATA100 is NOT 100% backwards compatible.

Personally, I think the drive should ship as ATA33 for maximum compatibility, not ATA100, even if it might slightly limit maximum throughput. ATA100 is just hype at the moment anyway since there are no consumer IDE drives in existence that can make use of even close to ATA66 bandwidth. If someone had an ATA100 controller and really wanted the drive at ATA100, they could just run the utility. A compromise would be to ship it as ATA66, but that wouldn't solve the problems some people may have if running ATA33 systems and Windows 2000.

 

[de8212]

Hey DaddyG. You may have hit on something I have been having problems with for a loooong time. The first time I built my pc (be6-2 and Live card) eveerything went smooth. No conflict whatsoever. A few months later I decided to do a clean install on 98SE. Now I have a conflict in Device Manager for "Creative SB Emulation". I uninstalled/reinstalled the actual card and drivers more times than I can remember but didn't fix a thing. This hasn't exactly casued me a problem but I am sick of seeing the red "X" in the Device Manager. DO you know what I can do to just get it out of there?

Robor, I didn't mean to try and butt in on your thread but this has been bugging me for too long now. Sorry about your abit board. Mine has worked pretty good although this isn't the first anti-abit post I have read. I may look to asus next time.
de

 

[Liquidity]

Sounds like you may have done this already, but here's the exact instructions on how to fix this problem:

Go into device manager and select properties on SB16 emulation. UNCHECK 'exists in all hardware profiles'. Rrrrrreboot.

Poof. Prollem solved.

 

[DaddyG]

Doing as the 'Liquid' one suggests should resolve the issues but just make sure that 'Config.sys' and Autoexec.bat are free of SB16 entries as well.

 

[pyr]

fixing a problem on any board shouldnt be such a hassle... of course almost 1/2 of all the boards ive used to build systems with failing in a year or 2 (or never working) shouldnt happen either. thanks abit. since ive switched to other brands ive not had any problems yet.

 

[LXi]

Robor:

Im surprised someone mentioned Ocean motherboards, do you know where their web site is? I had an Ocean board back in the Pentium days, decent manufacturer.

 

[Mday]

after having this asus board i am never buying an abit ever again.

 

[loosbrew]

man...now i feel like an ass for buying my kt7/raid board!! i hope i dont run in to as many problems as you guys have!!


looooo

 

[jd in IL]

Geez.....a rebuild with no issues to line out? What fun is that? Yes I had problems with my latest Abit board..but all was lined out in a day. FWIW my BX6r2 was the easiest build I ever did, no problems. This VIA chipset though is another matter.

 

[Futuramatic]

This may not be of help, but here it goes....

I have found this: With all 3 Asus boards I have used lately (one P3V4X and 2 CUV4X) I have found that I get the SAME issues. General setup cause lock-ups and BSOD like hell. What was it? A weak ass power supply ALL 3 TIMES. I know this might be juvenile for you, but check it anyway.

jd-

I am the exact opposite.... 11 Asus boards later, the only issues I have EVER had have been the freaking power supplies. I had one Abit board (BH6, who hasn't at this point? ), and it worked fine too. I guess because I am lucky (or cause I don't drink while building computers), the only board I ever had a problem with was a Soyo board and that was because the memory slot was physically damaged.

/me knocks on wood

 

[LordSandMan]

I've owned 3 Abit mobos (2-bp6's and one kt7-raid),one Asus (K7M),and a shuttle. I only had problems with one of the bp6's, fried HPT controller. From what I've seen around here though, I think I'm going Stay away from Abit in the future. I'll go with Asus or MSI.

 

[Hanpan]

After going thoruhg 2 abit bh6's i swore never to buy an abit board again. I finally broke down thouhg and bought a sh6 (hey there was no way i was buying a be6-2). My supplyer wouldn't even selel be6-2's because fo the sheer number of rma's. Any way so far other than the fact that it won't boot with any microsoft usb mouse unless i use the ps2 adapter and that the fsb speed is almays 1 mhz higher than what it says in the bios i have had no problems. KNock on wood but so far i am actually almost impressed with this board. IT has been just as stable as my p3b-f.

 

[Renob]

Abit is the best never had a problem..........

 

[ALstonLoong]

Hi guys ,
everyone sure have a problem with their mobo no matter which brand.I had 2 mobo from abit be6-2 and bp6 mobo both running extreme well... no problem at all. My be6-2 hight point controller running fine with my Quantum LM harddrive....and be6-2 is a great board for overclocking. Beside that abit provide a good cuustomer service if you have any problem about your mobo you can try to contact them. Their contact number is available at the webside www.abit-usa.com customerservice colume .


alston

 

[JackMDS]

I presume that I have to contact ?Ripley Believe it or Not?.

I have 5 computers, all of them Abit board (BH6, BE6, 2xBF6, BX-133). All O/C, and tweaked to the Max. The BE6 and the BX133 have HD on the Hi-Point channels.

When I bought the BE6, it was one of the first board sold, the board was working OK, but for O/C I had to de-solder the ?resistor? to be able to get the Voltage above default.

I constantly ?play" with some of these computers, I can not count the number of changes that I put the boards through.

I had never experienced any of the calamities described here and elsewhere!

 

[Hanpan]

Alstonloong.

YOur absolutly right. I even rma'd an msi board a couple of days ago. ALso have ahd a little trouble in the past. What sets abit apart is the sheer amount of problems people had with them. According to some suppliers i've talked to abit's rma percentage is as high as 35%. One even swore it was closer to 50%. Now i understadn there will be problems once in a while but 35% of the time isn't once in a while.

 

[nippyjun]

My 3 year old Abit Bx6 1.0 mobo has been great.

 

[shabby]

I hate abit boards too, i mean my bh6 is working just fine, my sisters bm6 hasnt broken a sweat yet, and my cousins bm6 is ticking like a rolex. I mean come on!

 

[WetSprocket]

I've had 5 Abits and built countless others. May be a fluke but never had a problem with any of them. Started with an IT5H(based on the review by Anand back in the day) and now with my KA7. The only real problem I've had is My Radeon but hopefully I can work it out. If abit was so bad I dont think they would get all the good reviews that they do. I've read alot about problems but I can only verify my experiences...

 

[MulLa]

Hanpan: Where did you pick up that sh6? Price?

 

[DABANSHEE]

All it comes down to is the odds

Abit & PCChips have both got RMA rates at about 10% or something, while Supermicro, Asus, Aopen, Asus, MSI etc have it at less than 5%.

So the odds are that most people will get a good board no matter what brand they get, But even so if you buy an Abit board it doubles the odds you'l end up with a dud.

Plus Abit charges an RMA fee of $25 dollars, which means that retailers have to add arround $3 to the price of every Abit board they sell to cover that 10% that will be returned.

 

[Dat]

be6-2 sucks.