Dragon-Lord

My abit be6-II v1.2 (intel BX) has been running flawlessly since I booted it up for the first time about four days ago. It has never been off and it has never crashed. The same cannot be said for my old supermicro motherboard, which I am seriously considering torching for Halloween... :}

I just know there are people out there who are going to try and "update" Windows 2000 to Windows Me, hehe. :}

That behavior is correct. The bios post should show different IRQs, but when ACPI under Win2k does its thing, they should all be one device (usually 9 or 11). In fact, since my flaky supermicro P6DBS v1.02 board reported IRQs from 1 to 20, I took it as a good sign when my new Abit BE6-II v1.2 booted up for the first time with everything in it and sure enough all my PCI cards are on IRQ11...and not a hiccup or crash yet... The new $120 board has already blown the old $450 one away...sad sad sad. :}

Have you installed IE5.5 and all updates, as well as MSMessenger 3.0? :}

The problem is with your Internet Service Provider, not your system. They must have a limit on email size. :}

I installed DX8v146 for W2K and while the D2D performance still seems excellent (like v140), the D3D performance has dropped to nearly DX7 levels (or at least DX8 pre 140)... 3Dmark2000 dropped back to 2800 for me from 3200. Anyone else seeing this behavior? :}

How exactly does one go about buying a "cheap junk" sblive? Or maybe you mean supermicro makes junk, or intel? I mean, these are the people who are having problems with SBlive also... :}

Perhaps he is pissed off at your obvious (and blatantly ignorant) arrogance, assuming that people "do not do their homework" before buying such gear. Many of the people on this site are IT managers and professionals. Many are acknowledged experts in the field. It doesn't mean they don't have problems...in fact, professionals learn by such threads as these... I mean, I remember a thread on this very site wherein someone bought the exact same tyan mobo as you did (I am sure partly because you kept saying how great your system is) and was having problems that were clearly bios related. Your recommendation to him was as it has always been "gee, my system works great! teehee". He went to the Tyan website for help and found that Tyan mentioned major issues that matched his problems that were being addressed. Fortunately for you, you weren't experiencing them. That was good to know (for you) but didn't help him. Get the point? You continue to miss the fact that people are running problematic systems under Win2K that run/ran flawlessly under Win98. That points to clearly driver, OS, bios issues with their gear. That is what a board like this, IMHO, is here to help with - advanced tech support for problematic issues. So, you can point out how well your system works as often as you want, but it has long passed the point of being annoying, and I think the gentleman posting above had clearly reached the point of no return. hehe So, I am not sure what *your* agenda is her, but myself and others are either looking for help and information, or offering what assistance we can to those who need it. Peace, :}

I think it is because, IMHO, every time some one on this board posts with a legitimate problem, you seem to pop up and interject a single line of "well, my system works great!", followed by a page long signature. You offer no help to the people who are asking for it. Your system specs never match those of the people asking for help, so your comment is more than irrelevant, it seems trite and rather insulting. And quite frankly, it seems like you are rubbing it in the faces of people who are legitimately in need of solutions to their problems from people who have concrete advice. My personal favorite is how you pipe up all the time with regards to the SBLive and how it works in your setup, even though the problems people are discussing are now openly acknowledged by Creative Labs in their newsgroup and on their website FAQ. I mean, I am sure 1000's of people have these products working, but it is the people who do not that are looking for assistance from the experts on this board. In that light, these posts seem self-serving, providing no help, relief, or support to the original poster or the people who are actually trying to help with the problem. My apologies for wasting bandwidth in this thread. :}

I think it is because, IMHO, every time some one on this board posts with a legitimate problem, you seem to pop up and interject a single line of "well, my system works great!", followed by a page long signature. You offer no help to the people who are asking for it. Your system specs never match those of the people asking for help, so your comment is more than irrelevant, it seems trite and rather insulting. And quite frankly, it seems like you are rubbing it in the faces of people who are legitimately in need of solutions to their problems from people who have concrete advice. My personal favorite is how you pipe up all the time with regards to the SBLive and how it works in your setup, even though the problems people are discussing are now openly acknowledged by Creative Labs in their newsgroup and on their website FAQ. I mean, I am sure 1000's of people have these products working, but it is the people who do not that are looking for assistance from the experts on this board. In that light, these posts seem self-serving, providing no help, relief, or support to the original poster or the people who are actually trying to help with the problem. My apologies for wasting bandwidth in this thread. :}

My mobo with the blown scsi chip just does not seem to be cutting it (I think it just can't handle all the juice I am running through it, see below). I have eliminated all other causes (except ****ty CL liveware), so it looks like I will be replacing the motherboard. So, given that I have two 450mhz P3s (pre-Cu), what is my best affordable upgrade option? I'd like to keep the majority of this gear. If it doesn't make sense to keep SMP with a new mobo, I'll keep whichever chip overclocks the highest (hehe) and upgrade the wife's computer with the other. Note that I went SMP to run high end 3D apps that take advantage of SMP, so if I can find a good dual replacement, that would be preferable. My video can go to 4xAGP and I am willing to try and push my ram from 100fsb to 133fsb, so I guess I am looking for the right fit. Should I try and go dual with another brand (I will not be buying supermicro again), or skip it and just run a Win2K reliable board from Asus/Abit/Tyan/Whoever? For example, is there a dual proc equivalent of the asus cusl2? Is it happy with W2K? Thanks in advance, :} ------------------ W2K Pro(Purchased Retail, ACPI/SMP) Supermicro SBDBS r1.02, Bios 3.0 (dead on-board SCSI chip) 2xPIII @450mhz (not o/c) 256mb PC100 Ram in 2 sticks 3xIDE HDs (50gb total, all NTFS) and 1 Pioneer IDE DVD-ROM (all UDMA) Geforce 256 DDR (32mb), CL AnnPro (DET v5.32) SBLive! Platinum with digital breakout card (LW3.0) 3COm 3C515-TX ISA Ethernet 10/100 (W2k CD) SIIG AP-40 UWide SCSI PCI (W2K CD) Nikon LS-2000 SCSI film scanner (drivers now released) Sony SDT-9000 SCSI 4mm DAT (W2K CD) SAF 4012 SCSI CD-Write (W2K CD) Iomega Zip 100 SCSI Drive (no drivers) MS Natural Keyboard Pro USB (updated MS drivers) MS Intellimouse Optical USB (updated MS drivers) HP Laserjet 6L via USB printing (W2K CD) Epson Stylus Photo 700 via parallel Rainbow Sentinel Parallel Dongle for LightWave6

okay, I have managed to get my machine to work flawlessly. To do this I had to... switch the SBLive out and replace with an A3D card (MX300) and run the A3D card with latest drivers from www.vortexofsound.com, but not select full hardware acceleration (which will crash in w2k) and run the machine in /onecpu mode, so that only one processor is running (sigh) but at least everything is working. it looks like my mobo/bios cannot handle both processors, etc. I will watch for A3D drivers, EAX updates, and bios updates to my mobo... for now, I run with a single processor...but at least I am getting 100% no crashes. :}

my 32mb geforce 256/DDR (CLAP) is showing 37,696 for video memory and 65,334 for texture memory....so mine seems correct, but the 64mb test still doesn't run under W2K/D3. My AGP aperture is at 64. I have tested 128. I will try 256 and pass on the results. :}

how are your checking that 45mb figure? Which program? :}

pr-man, are you running v1.1 of 3DMark2000? It was released specifically to address W2K issues. If you are, the other possibility is that your system's overclocking may be a problem here. I have heard a few reports of DX8betas not like o/c. That may just be that your system is now pushed "beyond" the limit that was safe before now that your card's acceleration features are fully realized. Have you noticed the 2D speedups? If turning it down a notch doesn't help, let us know what the error messages are and that might help. Since my mobo is going south, I *might* not be the best person to compare crash results with...hehe :}

As soon as I installed the D3 drivers, 3dmark would not run the 64mb test either. I think the truth is that it *should* only run on a machine with 64mb on board video memory, so this doesn't bother me or my scores. :}

thanks again! :}

it is not just your drivers...Win2K RTM and SP1 have ****ty directdraw routines (released prematurely in my opinion and downright dirty pool on MS part). Installing either DX8 (beta 140) or running a beta of Whistler (which I am sure has already been upgraded with the new DX routines) will show you that on the same system with the same hardware, software, and drivers, your machine can exceed W98 performance under W2K. So don't blame savage, or nvidia, or 3dfx...*all* W2K display drivers are crippled by the RTM/SP1 OS itself... under DXbeta8 140, my W2K machine runs 3Dmark 33% faster, screen redraws 10x+ faster, etc. etc. :}

looking at boards like the p2b-d mentioned above, I have found only the following: $284 AsusTek P2B-D $187 Tyan S1832DL $152 SuperMicro P6DBE (grrr) $147 Abit AB-BP6 Since there is a wide spread in price, I wanted everyone's opinions on these boards (and any others I have missed) as a replacement. Thanks in advance, :}

thanks...I will put that one on the list of possibles. :}

you need to install the new (140) beta build of DX8 on top of SP1...it works wonders for all 2d draws that I have seen. Might help you as well. :}

Note that ASUS drivers are just nvidia reference drivers with some added stuff to support the unique features of your card (if any). The reason the 3.79 version works fine on your machine is that almost nothing advanced is enabled in those drivers (for example, AGP). So, I am glad your machine is stable, but be aware that there remain something seriously wrong with your system (AGP?) if you are unable to run the newer driver sets. The Detonator3 drivers in particular rule if you have a geforce card. Best of luck! :}

okay, email him... :}

yes indeedy...email me :}

you need to install the latest beta, which rocks, instead. You'll have to hunt around for it. www.3dchipset.com or www.the-ctrl-alt-del.com have good info on DX8. :}