So my experience with SB Live cards have been very bad on Socket 370 Via Apollo chipsets. Have you tried the different versions of the Via 4-in-1 drivers? Somewhere around here someone's posted very thoroughly.

ODwilly wrote on 2021-12-26, 22:07:

Have you tried the different versions of the Via 4-in-1 drivers? Somewhere around here someone's posted very thoroughly.

I know the posts you mean. I've tried several versions, with no effect on stability.

Some of the cards you mention have known issues with older boards but if they run fine for a while I suspect a temperature issue.
Can you confirm North and South bridge temperatures are OK after running for a while ? Sometimes if memory gets hot over time it can cause lockups too.
Older boards with N and S bridge heatsinks generally have dried up heat sink goop and need it cleaned/redone. Also try a diff video card and see what happens....

Horun wrote on 2021-12-27, 02:51:

Can you confirm North and South bridge temperatures are OK after running for a while ? Sometimes if memory gets hot over time it can cause lockups too.

CPU and southbridge temperatures are not much higher than room temperature. The northbridge seems quite hot, over 130F/55C. Is this normal? The northbridge doesn't come with a heatsink.

I stuck a gigantic Zalman CPU cooler on the northbridge; no effect on stability.

I would definitely be suspicious of the Live! and that VIA-based USB 2.0 card. Both of those are troublesome cards. Those two are specifically popular problems, but in general PCI sound cards and USB 2.0 cards are often quirky and sometimes don't get along with other cards or motherboard controllers.

I've actually had good luck with Realtek cards. Less trouble than a 3C905 for sure. Intel Pro 100 / Pro 1000 are my preference though.

If you haven't already, you should also try George Breese's VIA PCI Latency patch. He spent a couple of years figuring out which VIA chipset registers caused problems and fixed what the BIOSs and 4-in-1 drivers had hosed up.
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=876

swaaye wrote on 2021-12-27, 22:23:

I would definitely be suspicious of the Live! and that VIA-based USB 2.0 card. Both of those are troublesome cards. Those two are specifically popular problems, but in general PCI sound cards and USB 2.0 cards are often quirky and sometimes don't get along with other cards or motherboard controllers.

How do these types of cards typically fail? What problems do they cause?

swaaye wrote on 2021-12-27, 22:23:

If you haven't already, you should also try George Breese's VIA PCI Latency patch. He spent a couple of years figuring out which VIA chipset registers caused problems and fixed what the BIOSs and 4-in-1 drivers had hosed up.
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=876

This sounds interesting, I'll give this a shot.

It's not that the cards are failing or defective but that PCI cards and chipsets are complicated and quirky and various combinations do bad things that cause crashes and data corruption. And VIA based motherboards are probably the most problematic. But I've had loads of fun figuring out PCI problems on 440BX too.

I basically don't use PCI PATA/SATA or USB 2.0 cards anymore because I'd rather just avoid the potential flakiness. With Win9x I usually entirely disable motherboard based USB 2.0 as well.

Fair enough. I've finally gotten some Windows XP crash reports that seem to implicate the video card or drivers, so I've ordered a few other cards I'm going to try. These crashes are distinct from the freezes I've been seeing: instead of locking up, the screen goes blank and the computer reboots itself.

swaaye wrote on 2021-12-27, 22:23:

If you haven't already, you should also try George Breese's VIA PCI Latency patch. He spent a couple of years figuring out which VIA chipset registers caused problems and fixed what the BIOSs and 4-in-1 drivers had hosed up.
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=876

I gave this a shot, the machine still freezes, even with only the ethernet card installed (no USB or sound card).

Is that new? You wrote it was stable with the ethernet card in the original post.

It will be interesting to see if it is a video card issue.

swaaye wrote on 2021-12-28, 01:18:

Is that new? You wrote it was stable with the ethernet card in the original post.

The crash reports are new, and I'm not sure what I did to cause it to crash this way. My guess is that it has to do with Motherboard Monitor, which I started running today in order to look more closely for heat problems. It turns out that in addition to the two CPUs there's a mysterious third temperature sensor on the board reading a steady 132-134 degrees Fahrenheit. I'm not sure what this corresponds to, since it's definitely not the northbridge and probably not the GPU. The data may be garbage.

Anyway, based on more recent testing, the system is definitely not stable with the ethernet card, at least not in Windows XP. The system can still crash even with no PCI cards installed at all, but the USB card and the sound card make the biggest difference.

I got a display driver crash, the kind where a message box pops up ("The nv4_disp display driver has stopped working normally"). Definitely suspicious; I'll try some other driver versions.

In the meantime, I tried running with the power supply from my gaming PC; no results. If there's a hardware problem, it's in the video card and/or the motherboard.

A longshot, but see if you disable cpu cache if the issues go away or swap pii cpus. When cache was on the motherboard i had a machine that did random lockups and crashes due to faulty cache. Not sure if you swapped cpus yet other than the coppermine you mentioned that didn't seem compatible.

lowlytech wrote on 2021-12-28, 15:24:

A longshot, but see if you disable cpu cache if the issues go away or swap pii cpus. When cache was on the motherboard i had a machine that did random lockups and crashes due to faulty cache. Not sure if you swapped cpus yet other than the coppermine you mentioned that didn't seem compatible.

I suppose I'll try anything once, but wouldn't a faulty cache show up in memtest86?

I just obtained another graphics card, a GeForce2 MX 400. After booting up with only that card installed and no PCI cards, the computer froze a few minutes into the first 3DMark2000 test.

y2k_survivor wrote on 2021-12-26, 21:28:

I've been working on a Win2k/WinXP build based on a Tyan S1834D dual Slot 1 motherboard (this has the VIA Apollo Pro 133A chipse […]
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I've been working on a Win2k/WinXP build based on a Tyan S1834D dual Slot 1 motherboard (this has the VIA Apollo Pro 133A chipset). Currently installed are: 2x512MB PC133 SDRAM, 2x Pentium II (Deshutes) 350 MHz, and a GeForce4 Ti4600 in the AGP 2.0 (x4) slot. (I realize that this combination makes no sense at all; the CPUs came with the board and are temporary.) The problem I'm having is that the computer constantly hard freezes; no error messages, no BSOD, it just seizes up completely.

In experimenting with different configurations, BIOS settings, and operating systems, what I've consistently found is that having PCI cards installed seems to be what is causing the computer to freeze. I've got several cards:

• An SB Live! (CT 4760)
• A gigabit ethernet card (RTL8110SC chipset)
• A USB 2.0 card (VIA VT6212L chipset)
• Onboard USB 1.0 ports (not technically a PCI card, but presumably runs off the PCI bus; can be enabled or disabled through BIOS configuration)

I've found that stress testing the CPU, memory, and AGP graphics card without any PCI cards installed does not appear to trigger any crashes, even when running overnight. However, if PCI cards are installed, a crash will typically occur within a few minutes. The exception is the ethernet card, which for some reason seems to have a minimal impact on the stability of the system. I can even reproduce this pattern when booting into an Ubuntu live CD, which would seem to rule out any explanations other than hardware.

It's worth noting that, until the system crashes, the cards all work fine. Audio, network access, and USB mass storage all work fine, with no issues reported through Windows (or Ubuntu).

Other observations:

• The capacitors on the motherboard all look okay. No signs of bulging, leaking, or corrosion.
• I used a Fluke 87V true RMS multimeter to check for voltage fluctuations coming from the PSU (a Seasonic SS-300FS Active PFC). All of the major rails (+5V, +3.3V, +12V, -5V, -12V) appear to be highly stable under load, well within the usual +/- 5% tolerance.
• I have a Coppermine Pentium III 1GHz (model SL4BS), but the motherboard does not POST with it installed, even after patching the BIOS to add the microcode updates for that model.
• Disabling ACPI and reinstalling Windows XP appears to have no effect. Additionally, using the USB 2.0 card without ACPI appears to be impossible.
• Running BIOS Patcher 4.23 and flashing the BIOS has no effect. The motherboard came with BIOS version 1.05 installed, and the only other version available from Tyan's FTP server is 1.03C.
• According to the manual, the motherboard supports PCI 2.2.

I'm basically wondering if there's anything else I can do to confirm this diagnosis, and whether anything can be done to repair or salvage the motherboard.

It sounds like your problems are elsewhere but beware of the via usb chips and ide/sata controllers are notoriously unstable. I have a really cool usb/ide/sata card that is totally useless because of via chips that it uses.

Yeah, cache issues usually show up in memtest

Do these products tend to work with more recent motherboards, or are they just completely defective no matter what you install them in?

y2k_survivor wrote on 2022-01-01, 02:26:

Do these products tend to work with more recent motherboards, or are they just completely defective no matter what you install them in?

not sure, but there are compalints about via based pci cards allll over the internet. How they passed qc is beyond me.

Had problems with mine since taking it out of the box.