Tannin said:
Hi Ted. Something was wrong with your M-II or the installation of it. It was probably the (quite uncommon) 75MHz version, as the (much more common) 66MHz bus one was practically bulletproof.
It was the 66MHz version and installation was fine. Anyone that fitted and sold an M571 with a 75MHz version "M-II" wants reaming with a nail studded basball bat IMO.
The chipset only had official 66MHz support and to use the 75 or 83 MHz FSB put the PCI bus out of spec. On 83MHz it was running at 42MHz if memory serves.
Overclocking is fine if its the buyers choice to do so but systems should *not* be made and sold running out of spec. Its asking for trouble.
Tannin said:
We sold just over 100 M571 boards and didn't have trouble with a single one of them. (Nope, not one RMA. Amazing for a PC-Chips board!
I didn't have a problem with mine either when I got rid of that rotten M-II 300
Tannin said:
Probably the only good board they ever made.)
Only one I ever owned myself so I'll reseve judgment.
Tannin said:
I don't have a record of what CPUs we put on them, but it's a fair bet that 80 or 90 of the 100+ were MII-300s.
Damn shame
Tannin said:
There might have been a handful of 75MHz bus 300s, and right at the end we had some of the 333s.
Incredible!!! Were you familiar with the specs of the board and the resultant overclocked PCI bus?
Tannin said:
I doubt we'd have wasted a K6-2 on one of those boards
Any K62 you could or should have used, ie those meant to run with a 66MHz FSB like the rare K62-333 or the 66MHz version of the K62-350 were in short supply anyway. The older K6 CPU's were not worth bothering with at that time, so it would have left you with the choice of fitting and running a later version meant for super socket 7 ie 100MHz FSB motherboards.
Tannin said:
(for the K6-2 we used FIC VA-503+ if we could get it, or any of several similar boards from other makers
For the later K62's with 100MHz FSB the FIC board was a good choice but hard to find in Aus. A lot of people bought the Epox MVP3G2 or G5. I think I've got that model right from memory. The models varied by the amount of onboard cache they had. I had for a short time the one with larger onboard cache.
Tannin said:
- people willing to pay the extra for a K6-2 were also the sort of people willing to shell out for a stand-alone video card).
That's a broad generalisation to make. You've got to remember the days of the Voodoo 2 add on card. It really wasn't necessary in the days of the M571 to buy a seperate and expensive "stand-alone video card" in preference to using onboard video in addition to the Voodoo 2. That combination worked fine for all but the top shelf games.
Tannin said:
And doubtless there would have been some M571s used with older CPUs - a Pentium MMX 166 or a Winchip 200, for example - to replace a board that had failed.
No doubt. I had a bit of a play with a Pentium 233 on that board at one stage just to make some comparisons with the AMD CPU's. Its such a shame that a lot of users were under the impression that the P 233 was about the limit the board supported.
Tannin said:
There was a later revision of the M571 board that reverted to the usual PC-Chips crap, and it was a very different story.
Yes I'm aware of the one you're referring to. It was a completely different board and was crap.
Tannin said:
That's interesting what you were able to do with a 571 at 83MHz. Hell, I never trusted them over 66!
They were a great little motherboard for those that liked tweaking. Didn't you previously say you fitted some with 75MHz versions of the M-II 300 ?
Tannin said:
Now for the $64 question: what, exactly, was wrong with your VIA chipset boards? It never fails to amaze me how many people say that VIA chipsets are crap, and how rare actual, documented problems are. Me, I'd trust a VIA chipset a long long way before I'd trust an Nforce 1 or Nforce II (and a shorter but still measurable way before I'd trust an Intel or SiS chipset).
Considering how much I've written so far in one hit it would be easier and less time consuming to ask you whats right with them? I'll then (when I have time) post some links to some of the 1000's of documented complaints of various VIA chipsets to be found on the net. If by "documented problems" you mean VIA actually acknowledging problems then I'll agree with you there. VIA certainly didn't like admitting that their chipsets had problems so you wont find many official releases detailing problems.
Tannin said:
The Nforce IIIs and Nforce IVs we have had these last few months, on the other hand, have (touch wood!) been completely flawless. So far, so good .... but after the random weirdnesses of the Nforce IIs and Nforce Is, which both seemed to go OK to begin with, I'm not convinced just yet.
I'll admit the nForce 1 was a buggy chipset (which I avoided) The early nForce 2 had 'some' documented problems. The later revisions were excellent and ceratinly more stable than what came before. For me nForce 2 has been amongst the best motherboards I've owned. I'm just getting to old, too impatient, and too busy to sort out bugs and I've had very little of those with nForce 2.
