ABIT KT7-RAID MOTHERBOARD

[dwspecial]

I have been trying to help my brother with a problem concerning the ABIT KT7-RAID motherboard. The problem has been on going for seven months now all revolving aroung the sound card installiation and configuration. We started with the TURTLE BEACH QUAZILLA, which we had nothing but problems with as far as IRQ conflicts, and the causing a curropted hard disk. A couple weeks later we switched to a Creative Labs SOUND BLASTER LIVE 5.1 and had exactly the same problem. So we concluded that the IRQ conflict problem was not a problem with the sound card but with the motherboard. We have contacted the vendor that sould him the motherboard and his response was that we had to download the latest BIOS and chipset driver for Via Tech. We did that and it did not help at all one they were installed. We have contacted Creative Labs about the problem and they said that the problem was the sound blaster 16 imulation that loads at boot up for older DOS games, but that they could not disable it. So if any one out there has an idea that might help we would greatly appriciate it. We don't know where else to turn.

Thanks for any help,

DWSPECIAL

 

[CitrixEngineer]

I have had no problem with the SB16 emulation; your issue of IRQ conflicts makes me think that maybe your BIOS is set to recognise the OS as plug and play.

Although it seems contradictory, switching this setting off generally improves Windows ability to resolve conflicts.

Let the BIOS manage all the PCI settings automatically, and allow the Graphics card to use its own IRQ.

As a "nice" touch, don't shadow the video BIOS - AGP cards typically run faster than RAM, so doing this is pointless and can cause issues. However, it's non-essential, so only do this once everything else works ;-)

You definitely need the latest 4-in-1 divers, as older ones tend to cause low level problems with the PCI bridge -> IDE controller.

There used to be a wonderful site at

http://www.rojakpot.com/Speed_Demonz.htm,

but I couldn't access it when I tried the link today. :-(

Anyone else know a good BIOS tweak link?

 

[xscape]

Make sure you haven't got the card in PCI slot 5. Any of the others are OK, slot 5 (second from bottom PCI slot) shares IRQ signals with HP370 IDE controller. If you install a card that doesn't allow IRQ sharing then your likely to get problems. Try another slot if this is the case.

Good luck!

 

[xscape]

Oh yeh - and even if the card does allow IRQ sharing, if you've got an OS that doesn't then your also gonna get problems (like Win NT).