- It is only my opinion, but I think you are waisting your time with this motherboard. At one point, I thought I got my board working fine. I installed Windows 98SE, ran some benchmarks, turned it off, powered it back up, and received errors after loading Windows.
I tried to install Win98 on a "large" WD Drive(6GB). Things went haywire, you don't want to hear that....I think there's a ghost inside this board. 😀
I guess the only way will be finding the perfect drive for this board and go with it. See below why.
At the beginning, for like 5 days, software reset did not work. I always had to reset manually. Then, out of the sudden, reset works again....
I think there is still hope. My only other option are two identical boards with via chipset, since the tomato board suddenly disappeared....
-Use FPM memory only - not EDO.
I found out that that does not change anything with that board.
-Use an Am5x86-133, not a POD.
Too bad two of the legs just fell off of mine. I guess that 133Mhz CPU is a goner.
-Do not use the onboard IDE. Use an ATA, SATA, or SCSI PCI card.
Well, after trying out many different cards and harddrives, I came up with the following conclusion:
Adaptec Controllers simply won't work. ISA or PCI, but PCI Controllers don't work at all. Windows identifies them, installs the driver, yet the drivers always say the card is not present. I tried several driver/card combos.
AMD Based SCSI Controllers may work "not installed in windows", in BIOS Emulation mode. But then, randomly it happens that the data on the HDD gets corrupted. If I install the Windows driver, as soon as I access the drive, blue screen. Older Win95 driver rendered the HDD Useless, the HDD is reported as 5GB instead of 18GB.
SIL 3114 Sata controller. Windows detects it, however claims that the driver is incorrect. Tries the drivers from different sources. Not a chance.
Too bad I don't have many options in non-raid SCSI/SATA controllers....
Other cards:
SIS Graphics Card gets way too hot for its own good.
PowerVR gets detected, driver however claims the card is not present after installation.
Other Raid controllers: Mainboard will not even boot from internal IDE Drives
ISA Based Graphics cards: Tried many, no picture.
ISA Sound cards (SB Pro) however work.
-Use double-banked cache only, that means, 9 cache modules (256 KB or 512 KB).
....oh.
-Set L2 cache into WT mode.
I found that does not make any difference. Even with Cache turned off, the board behaves this way.
-Use no more than 3 PCI cards.
I guess you could say as well not use any cards at all. The board is even picky about ISA Graphics cards...
-Use an S3 Virge.
I guess I will end up doing so. The board does not function with S3 Vision cards, it seems, tried 2 of them. No picture.
-Forget about the PS/2 port. It is not wired correctly on both versions, 1-4.
Never intended to.
-Use BIOS version 433AUS33.ROM. It is an AMI-based BIOS.
Yes, that is what I'm doing.
-Also, someone else on Vogons posted the following BIOS, which may be a later revision that 433AUS33.ROM. I am also attaching it, but I have not tested it personally.
Hmmm.... I hope the keyboard still works after flashing. 😁