Abit KT7A-RAID - Locks on disk access

[Lupo]

hi all. I have an ABIT KT7A-RAID motherboard. I am using PC133 memory (I have tried PC100 with the same results) and an AMD Athalon 1300 CPU. I have tried the WT and the ZT bioses with similar results.

My problem is that whenever I do large amounts of disk access (eg benchmarking or defraging), the machine locks solid after a while. This is my 2nd board. The first one did it as well. I'm only getting these problems under Windows 98.

I am using the normal ide devices, not the HPT ones. I have disabled the HPT controller in the Bios. This is because I haven't worked out how to get FreeBSD working with it.

These locks are concerning me. I have upgraded my bios, and also upgraded to the latest 4in1drivers. My CPU temperature is 48C and my system temperature is 30C.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!

 

[GiveMeDeals]

How many hard drives do you have? Can you tell us the IDE devices you are running on IDE channel 1 and 2?

 

[Idiot56209]

What sound card are you using and what version VIA 4 in 1 patch?





Pocket Calculator (Kraftwerk)

 

[1921Photoelectric]

Also check your hard drives. Some hard drives misinterpret the ATA setting the hard drive company will have a fix for that Also are your cables 80 wire? If your using ATA66 drives you should have 80 wire cables otherwise you can get errors. Try keeping HD and CD's on separate channels if you can some of them don't like to be mixed ether. Good Luck!




<< Beer is proof that God love us. : Ben Franklin >>

 

[HJB417]

you could always lower the transfer rates, like disable udma and use one the pios. having udma enabled in dos would cause my system to hang when I try accessing files in the raid hd, run scandisk or using it in windows. after windows is setup, I can enable udma and everybody's happy again. you can always try one of the 4in1 drivers.

 

[Lupo]

IDE Devices are as follows:

IDE 1 Master - IBM DJNA 351520
IDE 1 Slave - Seagate ST310232A
IDE 2 Master - Pioneer DVD
IDE 2 Slave - IBM DTLA 305020

The version of the 4in1 drivers that I am using is 4.31v

My sound card is a Sound Blaster Live. The sb16 emulation is on IRQ 7 (lpt 1 is disabled). The Creative SBLive Value is on IRQ 12. The card is in slot 3.

I have tried using both the 80 wire cables that came with the board and my original 40 wire cables. The problem shows up in both cases. I have also tried underclocking the machine (all the way down to 1100) and it still persists.

 

[GiveMeDeals]

Remove the DVD and the segate then try transfer files between the 2 IBMs and see what happens.

 

[HJB417]

did you try disabling dma yet and using something like pio2?

 

[ogn]

Sounds like a SB Live/686B south bridge bug.

 

[Lupo]

It's Fixed!

First I tried putting all of the hard drives on the HPT ports. The lockup problems persisted. I then replaced my 300W PSU with a 400W PSU. It works fine now!

It's been running for 2 hours with no locks so far. Thanks for all your help

 

[ogn]

There must be something else going on or you really had a weak 300W PSU. I have a 300W in my Antec SX1030 and it powers AMD 1.4Ghz, 4 7200RPM HDD, 1 5400RPM HDD, 12x10x32 CDRW, DVD-Encore, Zip, Floppy, and 3 Case Fans.
Well at least the problem went away...

 

[TomJ]

I think you have declared victory too soon. I am having a similar, if not the same, problem with three computers that I have. One has a KT7-RAID mb, the other two have KT7A-RAID mbs. Sometimes the period between lockups can be 24 hours, sometimes only 30 minutes.

 

[GoCanucks]

I just got the KT7A and I&quot;m having some stability problems as well. It froze while running scan disk, and some other problems. Haven't had time to tinker with it yet, but I will get to that soon. Other than having all the latest drivesr, what else do I need? I remember hearing about some Abit KT7(A) help site, does anyone know the URL or sites that can help for troubleshooting? Thanks.

Nick

 

[lapdog]

try http://www.viahardware.com/faq/kt7/kt7faq.htm

 

[GoCanucks]

Thanks lapdog, that site is pretty helpful. I've done everything I think that will help, and its running fine so far, but, and a big but, only stable without the SB Live card in there. With it in, I get random freezes which are a real pain, cuz it usually corrupts the registry and sometimes I have to reload WinME that I am using. So I guess I'm hit with the common SBLive problem, but I heard this was resolved? I have the latest VIA 4in1 patch, tried the SB Live with the newest drivers as well but that didn't work. Any other suggestions to get my Live! value card working? Thanks

Nick

 

[TheTeacher]

I hear all this stuff about the SBLive cards and southbridge problems, but I have had about 7 motherboards that have 686B on it and a SBLive and have never once had this problem? Why is that? I always put the card towards the bottom of my PCI slots if that makes a difference. Plus I never put two cards next to eachother.
Mike

 

[GoCanucks]

I had the SBLive! in PCI3 and no other PCI cards, but still had the problem

Nick