Awesome work on this board! I just recently came across this thread as I've been trying to find a board that fits my needs for a PIII system and purchased one of these KC-19+ boards in an attempt to see how the i820 chipset compares. It seems that it's pretty much on par with 440BX, from what I've read, so that sounds interesting to say the least, but the native 133MHz FSB is attractive and the AGP divider is definitely a big plus.
I'm curious about this PCI-ISA bridge chip. The datasheet for the PC87200 suggests full PC/PCI DMA support but doesn't have much to offer about ISA DMA. It's interesting to see the feature parity with the IT8888F that explicitly discusses DDMA and PC/PCI DMA separately. Admittedly, my understanding of the differences and intricacies here is fairly limited, so I'd be interested to see what anyone has to share on this topic.
I've read some success stories of using this board with a SoundBlaster 16 (one is here), but it seems that this PCI-ISA bridge is limited, at least when it comes to cards like the GUS that require various high DMAs. I'd be curious to see if an AWE64 would work in this board, as that could make quite the potent combination.
Out of curiosity, does anyone know if the HP->FIC BIOS flash must be done in Windows? I saw earlier on the thread that White and Gatewayuser200 found success with the HP utility, but is this in reference to the HP-provided Phoenix utility in DOS or the HP-provided Windows flash tool? I've found both, and I'll attach them here if anyone needs.
Part of what makes this board so attractive is that I'm coming from an ASUS CUV4X that just doesn't bring me much joy in terms of its quirkiness; it's a great board, no doubt, but the VIA chipset is definitely not clock-for-clock equal to 440BX and installing the 4-in-1 drivers seems to help, but not completely ameliorate, the VIA chipset's quirks when it comes to AGP. Speaking of, I swapped the board temporarily to an ASUS CUBX-E (which I may still use over the KC-19+) and found a huge difference in terms of GUI speed, even with a GF4 Ti4200. It seems others have noticed this phenomena. The KC-19+'s use of the i820 seems to be the best of both worlds, avoiding the 440BX's 133MHz overclocking situation and avoiding VIA screwiness. If the ISA situation is salvageable, at least in part, I'd think this board would be an attractive alternative to the more mainstream 440BX setups.
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