thecheese

Has anyone yet experienced any of the same data corruption/Sblive/ATA100 performance issues that plagued the KT133A/686B chipset combo boards with the newer KT266/VT8233 Chipsets? I am particularly interested in hearing from users of the Asus A7V266 board.

Thanks, but I do already have Doom95. I probably should have refered to DOS games in general in my last post, not just the one I was fiddling with at the time of writing. There are still a few DOS games I would like to play sometimes, and if I can get them going under XP rather than dual booting I'd be much happier

I remember ages ago in an article on the web regarding running DOS based programs under WinXP. I now have Windows XP RC1 and just out of curiosity installed DOOM (which I still don't mind to play every once in a while) I ran through the setup leaving everything as default, in win2k everything defaulted to no sound, whereas in this XP release it defaulted to sound blaster sound. When I loaded Doom it actually worked, sound and all, it just ran very sloooowwww. I've fiddled with the program properties to try make it ran as well as it did on my good old 486 with no luck. Has anyone had any luck in trying this? I used Sound Blaster for the FX, and General Midi for the music (selecting Sound Blaster for the music did not work)

From what I've found new drives can be mounted in almost any way. It is however recommended you keep them mounted horiztonally/vertically and not angled. Most drives have an exposed PCB on the bottom side of the drive, if you mount it upside down you'll more than likely get dust build up on the PCB. It's fine for other PCB's in the system (i.e mainboard, vid cards etc), so I don't see how it would be different on the HDD.

What!!!! No Doom?? The game that really started it all? Even to play now it's still a good game in my mind, great atmospheric music even though it's only midi, clever level design and lots of nostalgic memories and the first game to offer network multiplay etc. Wolfenstien started it, but Doom revolutionised first person shooters. Just my 2c

Unfortantly I do not have a magic wand and cannot fix or explain the problems people are having. In my previous post I was simply adding the results I've found to the forum. People were bagging Creative when the problem is obviously chipset related also. I was merely posting my results so that others may benefit from it when choosing to upgrade etc. If some on this forum has a problem and wan't it solved they wan't to know what is the best/cheapest option? Do they change their Mainboard, Sound card or O/S? What if they bought a new sound card and found the same problem existed with a totally different brand of card? My post may have prevented them from making that mistake. I can tell you I did not spend the good part of a day mucking around with win2k/mainboard/soundcard combos for the fun of it. If Nvidia can build cards that work perfectly in Intel and even Mac based systems why was there such a problem with VIA based platforms VIA support is getting better but the problems only seem to be solved when VIA released updated drivers i.e the ever evolving 4in1's! I put two totally different sound cards into a KT133 system (Sblive, AW744PRO Aopen PCI) and got the exact same problem both times, and I then put them into a intel chipset board with no probs at all running on mainboard drivers right out of the box, no patches updates or anything. So if you are in a position where you are about to buy or upgrade, you've got a couple of options. 1) If speed is the most important factor and you're willing to put up with somewhat problematic drivers go the AMD Socket A. 2) If you're willing to sacrifice a little speed in favour of a relatively problem free platform driver wise, got the genuine Intel chipset. These are the results I've found and if it benefits just one or two people on the forum, then it was a worthwhile post in my mind.

I own an SBLive value card and never had any probs with sound (crackles etc) under win2k when using my BX chipset mainboard P3-450 combo. After upgrading to a Duron KT133 Based system I've experienced nothing but problems with my SBlive. Luckily I work at a computer wholesaler and am able to try these things out at work. I installed a fresh copy of Win2k (SP2) on two machines at work, one using an Aopen AK73(a) KT133a Mainboard (VIA) running a AMD Duron 800, the other an Asus CUSL2-C (intel 815) running a Celeron 800. Every other component in the systems were indentical, RAM, Video Card, HDD etc. The intel 815 system exhibited no sound crackling issues whatsoever, the Via AMD solution was plagued with the usual probs (running the VIA 4.31 all in ones) Just to be sure I tried another brand of VIA mainboard (a gigabyte with the same description, cannot remember the model now, I had to reinstall win2k again) with the same results. I now run a Celeron 800Mhz @ 1066Mhz (133FSB) on the ASUS CUSL2-C with no probs whatsoever. It may be marginally slower than the AMD combo I had, but it's reliable, stable with no driver issues under win2k. My brother still has a BX based board and I've tried my SBLive in his win2k system, no probs. Here's the stranger part, I installed a Aopen AW744PRO sound card (yamaha Chipset OEM type Card) and it also crackled under win2k. I would've done more tests but by this time I'd had more than enough. Maybe the problem is not all creative's fault. Make of it what you will.....

Just before I start my comment I wan't to make it clear that I am not defending Monarch Computers, they sound very unprofessional and shonky, I can relate as I've had similar dealings with a company here in Brisbane Australia. But I will say this... I've now worked for a wholesaler for the last 2 years and am fully aware of shonky retailers. Unfortunantly the whole computer component industry is in a state where margins on items such as memory, video cards & hard disk drives are often as low as 3% I've seen many companies big and small go down or have serious cutbacks on staff within the last 12 months. It's not good news and the bottom line is companies cannot and won't survive on these margins for ever. Even though it may be a $300.00 vid card you are buying, chances are the guy you're getting it off (if he's legit, pays his taxes etc, but that's another matter altogether.....) is making as little as twenty bucks on it, maybe less. So if price is your most important factor in buying, by all means buy on the cheapest price you can find, but be weary you may get stung later on down the track. Just my 2c, keep it in mind.