Yes, the update did the trick. Let me point out that this wasn't a linux machine. I was only mentioning it because many people were unaware of it and knew that it was so incrediblt bad that many other people might see it. Even though I am going to stick with the board, the Intel chipset for is better. The PCI throughput goes from 90 Mb/s on the Via to 110 on the Intel. Before the patches and updates to the bios I was getting around 60. Food for thought :)
Rick AS> There have definitely been a few issues with those Via KT133/266 AS> chipsets. Seems to be due to some control bits Via did not originally AS> document, or at least not well enough. But it looks like Iwill updated AS> their BIOS to deal with what seems to be this problem a few months ago AS> (I've got the same board, more info below). AS> A probably related issue was that under Linux, Athlon optimizations in AS> the 2.4 kernels exposed problems booting on motherboards with these Via AS> chipsets (fer instance the one that RedHat 7.2 tries to boot after the AS> initial install, if it detects an Athlon). But .. there was a patch a AS> few kernels back (2.4.10?) that fixed some cases, and a proper patch AS> based on info from Via that went into 2.4.18-pre1 (also included in AS> Jussi Laako's 2.4.17-jl11 low latency patches, which is was I run). AS> It seems that with a current BIOS and current drivers (or Linux kernel) AS> that these problems are finally behind us .. though certainly a blemish AS> on Via's record. AS> - Ariel AS> in particular this BIOS update looks impt: (see support.iwill.net) AS> "KK266 for Product No is 35103A, BIOS Date Code: Apr.26.2001 AS> 1.Fixed system performance lost. AS> 2.Fixed SoundBlaster LIVE! card are distorted AS> 3.Fixed files copied from one IDE hard disk to another are corrupted. AS> 4.Fixed files are corrupted when copying from to/from DVD, CDROM or CDRW AS> device. AS> 5.Correct CPUID=0643H ratio table. AS> 6.Fixed data corruption with 686B."
