Hi all, Just found this on a website related to via hardware,, Thought those of you with the kt133 686b southbridge issue would find it of interest.. Official statement from VIA: The data corruption error, which some web sites and people have reported with the 686b Southbridge, is caused by incorrect bios registry setting to the Northbridge. These bios settings were made by motherboard manufacturers, in an attempt to fix a conflict with the Sound Blaster Live Value cards. Information has been provided to all motherboard manufacturers on how to correctly resolve both the data corruption error and the Sound Blaster Live conflict. The patch released by VIA in the 4in1 4.31 drivers’ replicates the correct bios settings. We provided this patch to make sure as many people got a fix to their Sound Blaster Live problems as soon as possible. Most motherboard manufacturers have now corrected their bios and the patch is not necessarily needed although it will not harm any VIA based system if installed. Interesting, if it is true, then my system (Abit KT7a, (which has a two week old bios. next one above the ZT mentioned below) should well and truely be safe from the problem.. assuming that the above is true of course... It suggests that Via have produced a software patch that rectifies the bios problem if its present, which means that someone in the linux community will probably do the same sometime soon... either that, or linux should detect if there is a problem and suggest a bios update before proceeding with the install... One last thing I found of interest..: Another fix is that many of the Motherboard companies have now released upgraded bios’ which repair the problem without even having to install the VIA fix. It would be a good idea to contact either your Vendor, or Motherboard Manufacturer to find out if a updated bios is available. An example of this is the ZT bios from ABIT for their motherboards using the 686b Southbridge, this has been claimed to fix this problem without the VIA fix. The page with this info is: http://www.viahardware.com/686bfaq.shtm#_Toc518065961 regards frank
