Hi all,
I recently installed a new motherboard from FIC. It has the VIA 686B
southbridge chip and according to the Register it has a bug in it. I have
found fixes for windows on the FIC and VIA websites but cannot find a way
to fix the bug for Linux. My Mandrake is acting strange and I haven't
changed anything except the motherboard and cpu (AMD 850Mhz) . Any help
would be greatly appreciated. I really want to get rid of windows but
can't until I can fix the bug. Thanks
Below is the article I read. Sorry this is so long. VIA, as of today,
has not posted anything regarding a fix. Either that or I was looking in
the wrong place on there web site.
Data-corruption bug hits VIA chipsets
By: Tony Smith
Posted: 12/04/2001 at 11:52 GMT
VIA has confirmed a data-damaging glitch in its 686B
Southbridge
chip - a major part of the Taiwanese company's KT-133A
chipset -
and is working with mobo makers to prepare BIOS
updates to fix the
problem.
The southbridge part is used in the vast majority of AMD
Athlon-oriented mobos, primarily the KT-133, but it
can be used with
northbridge parts from the Apollo Pro 133, KX-133A and
AMD-76x
chipsets too. VIA said it is investigating the problem
to see how
many chipsets are affected.
The bug was uncovered by German hardware site Au-Ja!
It's not
exactly a common problem: the date corruption affects
large, 100MB
and up file transfers between two hard drives
connected to separate
IDE channels exchanging the data by DMA. Having a
Creative Labs
Soundblaster Live card in place seems to exacerbate
the problem.
VIA's BIOS fix works by adjusting a number of PCI
settings, which,
according to Tecchannel, suggests the problem is a
result of
competitive PCI access.
VIA told The Register that it is a BIOS issue, and it
will be posting a
fix on its Web site sometime next week. ®
Related Links
Au-Ja's initial report (in German)
Tecchannel's summary (in German)
