Soyo K7V Dragon+

chottoED · Post by **chottoED** » Sun Jan 20, 2002 2:53 am

what exactly is the problem installing the OS on the system?

Bigal · Post by **Bigal** » Sun Jan 20, 2002 8:48 am

chottoED: For W98, it's not even reaching that main install window (where it says W98 will take about 45 minutes to install. It stops with a message "getting system files...", which comes just before that main install window. For W2K, I have the 4 boot disks; the first 3 run fine, and then on the 4th boot disk, it stays something like "starting windows 2000"... and never comes up with anything suggesting that I'm going into an install window from the CD. Both times appear related to grabbing files from the CD, which is a CDRW in my system. Maybe I should put in a regular CD drive, and load from that instead. What do you think? I can read files off the CDRW, but there were a few times it wasn't reading the disk while in DOS at the A prompt.

chottoED · Post by **chottoED** » Sun Jan 20, 2002 2:13 pm

hmm...
a BIOS flash just may fix this buggy behavior.... why are u dual booting?

Bigal · Post by **Bigal** » Sun Jan 20, 2002 7:43 pm

chottoED :

No, I didn't do the bios flashy thing. I was on the right track with my thinking about the CDRW as being the common choke point. I decided this morning that the generic driver might not work well with the 24X TDK CDRW, so I also installed a standard CD-ROM, and loaded W98SE from that drive. No problem! Boy, I sure was getting upset yesterday. I wasted about 4 hours trying different ways to load the operating system, and each time it would just die.

So, for everyone reading this, you either need the correct driver to run an operating system install with a CDRW, or you need to use a standard CD-ROM with the generic driver.

Maybe tomorrow I'll get the new system running with all of the features enabled. My rheostat fan bus is working really well. It controls the neon light, the side panel fan, the front fan, and the rear exhaust fan. If I turn down the side and rear fans, the noise really goes down! The two 60mm CPU fans are actually quiet, and the CPU (Athlon 2000+, unlocked) is only running at 41-43 C at idle.

I'll probably flash the bios once I verify everything is working.

Bigal · Post by **Bigal** » Mon Jan 21, 2002 6:41 pm

Well, I flashed to the latest KVXA2BA1.bin bios successfully. However, two things are giving me problems (they were problems before the bios flash too):

1). I cannot get my CD-ROM or any device to work on IDE #3 or IDE #4. I have the jumper set properly on the motherboard, and I have disabled the RAID in the bios. I have the ports enabled also in the bios. Should I enable the RAID in the bios???

2). I can set the multiplier in the bios to either 13 or 14 (the auto setting gets me 12.5 with the Athlon 2000+), but it doesn't appear to change the speed of the processor. It would appear that I didn't successfully unlock the CPU, even though I was real careful in filling the pits, and drawing the conduct grease to connect the L1 bridges. I'm sure it was a good job before putting the heatsink on, so maybe I moved the shim just enough to smear the conductive grease. If I can set the multiplier in the bios, does that mean I have successfully unlocked the CPU????

It's running easily at 1700 MHz (FSB increased a few MHz above 133 MHz default). I don't really need more speed at this point, but you know us overclockers - if there is speed to be had, then we want it!

Any suggestions would be appreciated.....

chottoED · Post by **chottoED** » Tue Jan 22, 2002 1:44 am

ok... here's what i've heard...
you prolly shouldn't run a cd or dvd drive on the raid controller (even w/ raid disabled)...

and as for the multipliers... test to see if you can say... set the multiplier at 10 or something... something lower...
so far.. A LOT of mobo's are lacking in support at 12.5x and higher... even w/ their latest flash...
the 13x setting tends to be really 12.5x... (tom's hardware has an unlocking the XP article in which they set the multiplier at 13 and got 12.5 also)

i'm not sure what's going on w/ the drive thing... but if you didn't originally hook it up to the onboard ide controller (non promise) then you should and see if that helps... it could very well be your cables... do you have any spares you can try out?

Buzz · Post by **Buzz** » Tue Jan 22, 2002 2:41 am

If you are goin to use IDE3&4 as a ordinary IDE controller (no raid), u still need to enable the Raid controller in the BIOS, but u need the Ultra driver in WinX.
And u need to configure the Promise BIOS.

In short: rtfm, its explained really good there.

Shadow250 · Post by **Shadow250** » Tue Jan 22, 2002 11:09 am

i may have a solution for your ide 3-4 problem. for those two ports to work in windows they need a driver for the promise chip. there are 2 drivers located on the soyo cd for the promise chip one is a raid driver the other is a non raid driver, this one makes it function as a regular hdd port in windows it will not work in dos.

Bigal · Post by **Bigal** » Tue Jan 22, 2002 10:23 pm

chottoED , Buzz, and Shadow250:

Thanks for the inputs. I found the proper section in the manual (Chapter 8, page 107) that deals with the Ultra Family Driver Installation. I somehow skipped that after seeing I didn't need the RAID drivers in Chapter 7, and then I saw the discussion of how to configure the RAID array (child's play, right?). I'll give it a try in a couple of days, when I have some time. I really want to get my CDRW drive onto it's own port, but right now, all my devices (HD, CDRW for IDE#1, CD-ROM, ZIP-100 for IDE#2) are functioning properly. Besides that initial operating system install problem with the generic driver / CDRW drive, I've had minimal problems. This experience compares very favorably against my experience with the Asus A7V a year ago. Sure I've learned some more tricks, but that mainboard, and it's weekly bios updates, was a real pain to configure properly.)*

Bigal · Post by **Bigal** » Wed Jan 23, 2002 11:54 pm

Well, not the exact way I wanted though. It turns out that the ZIP-100 drive will not work on IDE #3 or IDE #4, no matter what I do. So it ended up on IDE #2, where it is very happy. I initially put the CDRW as a Master on IDE #4, and the CD-ROM as a Slave on IDE #4, but I may put the CD-ROM as a Master on IDE #3 later. The promise controller loads after I enabled it in the bios (Seems funny to be enabling the RAID feature to get these ports to work in a non-RAID way - that's not spelled out in the manual.), but after it finds the two optical drives (Ultra 66 for the CDRW, and Ultra 33 for the CD-ROM), it gives me a statement saying that there were no Ultra 100 devices found, so the Ultra-100 driver isn't going to be loaded. Maybe that means that I really didn't need that driver after all, and I only needed to enable the RAID feature in the bios.

Anyway, I'm happy. The machine is now upstairs, in the company of my other Athon rigs. I think it's time for some Quake III gaming....

outfits · Post by **outfits** » Thu Jan 24, 2002 1:58 am

Bigal

So, for everyone reading this, you either need the correct driver to run an operating system install with a CDRW, or you need to use a standard CD-ROM with the generic driver

Thats quite a blanket statement from an expierence of one setup one time. My Philips CDRW loaded 2000 Pro
on a fresh formated drive without a problem.
Via has a Zip drive patch, may or may not fix your problem. CDRoms on ide 3+4 have no problem that I've heard of but you cannot use them as boot devices that way. Raid 0 setup is not too hard but you must follow the instructions. I set one up on an Asus board last week, which is basically the same as Soyo's. If anyone is interested and can't quite figure it out, post here. I'll try to walk you thru it.
I haven't had any luck unlocking my XP either. Any multiplier except Auto shows it as an Athlon 1266 on boot. My keyrate in RC5 goes from 4.9mks to 3.4mks and confirms I'm underclocked so to speak. I have read that others have not been able to unlock some XP's, so maybe we are just lucky .

gallina, not sure I can remenber all of them, there were lots. Reboots after clicking on a link or graphic, major mouse pauses, for like 2-3 seconds some movement then more pauses, various video artifacting, I added a second stick of memory and it took about two hours of tinkering before I could boot into Windows and more. I gave the MSI a fair shot but it couldn't cut it, so out the door. It was actually the worst mb I've ever tried.

chottoED, I read your XP unlocked fine, any advise,hints, tips you can give?

chottoED · Post by **chottoED** » Thu Jan 24, 2002 2:19 am

wow... i guess i've had the smoothest installation here huh?

all i can say for the XP is... be patient... it took me almost 1/2 hr...
i followed the instructional video available on tom's hardware (yes i actually listened to that... but i only go there once a year) and it worked perfectly... one thing i should note is that most motherboards show 12.5 and 13x multiplier settings in the bios as 13 and 14x... not sure why...
you can truely test whether you're unlocked or not by changing the multiplier down to say... 10x... whatever is lower than your default... if it worked.. then you've succeeded...
good luck gentlemen and keep us posted eh?

here's the video btw...
http://www4.tomshardware.com/column/01q ... index.html

here's the non video
http://www4.tomshardware.com/howto/01q4 ... index.html

Bigal · Post by **Bigal** » Thu Jan 24, 2002 7:46 am

outfits:

Blanket statements, along with all-encompasing claims, get the most attention, don't you agree? Actually, I have built 3 machines from scratch now, and heavily modified 2 others. I never had the problem in loading the operating system from the optical drive like I had this time, and I'm sure it was a driver issue. Sure, your Phillips CDRW may run fine with the generic driver, but I am absolutely sure that my TDK CDRW didn't like it. Anyways, there are always exceptions, especially from different manufacturers. I really wanted the post to warn other system builders of the potential problem of using a CDRW to load the operating system.

I might try playing around with the multiplier this weekend. As I said before, I was very careful to fill the gaps and draw the connections with the conductive grease. I suppose some of it could have smeared after assemblying the heatsink, and maybe even the high temperature will cause the grease to expand enough to bridge the gaps between the L1 connections.

Also, thanks for the info on the Via Zip patch. I'm going to keep it on IDE #2 for now though. I just wanted to get it off a shared bus, since it runs in PIA Mode 0.:burger

Bigal · Post by **Bigal** » Thu Jan 24, 2002 8:15 am

chottoED:

Ok, I was waiting for my ride to show up this morning (business trip down to NC today), so I decided to play around with the multiplier. I went up to 14X, and during the post, it showed something like a 682 MHz speed for the CPU. I didn't like that, so I tried the 11.5 setting, and it came up underclocked at 11.5; that means two things - I have successfully unlocked the multiplier, and this mainboard or bios doesn't support an overclocking of the CPU multiplier. Rats. That means I can only play with the FSB, which is actually going well. I'm running a 137 MHz FSB right now, giving me 1712 MHz for the CPU speed. So far, it's rock stable, and the temperature is not an issue.

chottoED · Post by **chottoED** » Thu Jan 24, 2002 9:51 am

yeah... so it's prolly just the BIOS...
a flash should fix that later on

PCA Forums

Soyo K7V Dragon+

It hangs during setup...

Oh yes! I figured it out!

Flashed the bios, but...

Ok, I see it in the manual now...

Got it working tonight

Tried the multiplier....