Mainboards: an issue for OS/2 - OS2

This is a discussion on Mainboards: an issue for OS/2 - OS2 ; This posting is in the context of Australia where availability of parts depends on the particular selection importers happen to pick. I could try to buy direct from the US but the warranty and return of goods issue becomes too ...

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Thread: Mainboards: an issue for OS/2

  1. Mainboards: an issue for OS/2

    This posting is in the context of Australia where availability of
    parts depends on the particular selection importers happen to pick. I
    could try to buy direct from the US but the warranty and return of goods
    issue becomes too hard.

    With the advent of USB 2.0 I have (naturally) become more interested
    with these devices, particularly mass storage devices.

    My Asus A7N266 mainboard is showing its age be not having USB 2 host
    controllers. I can't add an 2.0 card because all the sockets are
    occuppied. All the sockets are occuppied because neither the sound nor
    networking chip can be used because of the lack of drivers.

    The lack of drivers for up-coming mainboards is getting worse and
    worse. Also drivers don't necessarily work. For example:

    The A7N266 has two OHCI controllers but no amount of fiddling with
    the USB linse in config.sys will make these work with a USB stick with a
    FAT16 filesystem on it. That is despite the drivers loading correctly
    and presence of phantom drives.

    As I have written in recent postings I have had a terrible time with
    two Gigabyte mainboards. Firstly the GA-K8VM800M and 2ndly a GA-K8U.

    The GA-K8U was so bad that when the WPS came up and ran for a few
    minutes it would freeze. It was not possible to complete fiddling
    around with the placement of the add-in PCI cards to get a working
    arrangement before my boot volume was badly scrambled in the last freeze
    before I gave up. I had to use rescue floppies to straighten things
    out. More than a dozen directory and files were "found" by chkdsk and
    put in a D:\Found2 directory and had to be manually put back into place.

    I could live with the GA-K8VM800M but after trying to up-date its
    bios trying to solve some usb issue it became toast! Gigabyte's flash
    update bios was crook! I may be able to get a warranty replacement but
    this will take time.

    Fortunately I have a supplier who is willing to "lend" me new
    mainboards to try out but if I try to check out multiple boards that
    will be stretching the friendship.

    There are two more boards to check out. They must have socket 754
    since I have bought a Sempron 3000 for that socket. One would be by
    Asus and the other by MSI.

    If anyone can indicate which board I'd have less trouble with than the
    GA-K8VM800M I'd be interested to hear. You have to keep in mind what I
    can buy here in Australia though.

    PS: I'm back using TB for OS/2 running on the A7N266 for now.

    --
    To reply by e-mail edit this address to the correct form: vbien at
    attglobal dot net

  2. Re: Mainboards: an issue for OS/2

    On Fri, 30 Dec 2005 21:41:50 UTC, Victor Bien wrote:

    > All the sockets are occuppied because neither the sound nor
    > networking chip can be used because of the lack of drivers.

    Sound has been working on that board with the UNIAUD driver
    for several years now. I did the initial fix in spring 2003.
    The network is kinda working with the GENMAC driver, but has
    issues (especially when running Novell NetWare Client).


    --
    Ruediger "Rudi" Ihle [S&T Systemtechnik GmbH, Germany]
    http://www.s-t.de
    Please remove all characters left of the "R" in my email address

  3. Re: Mainboards: an issue for OS/2

    Ruediger Ihle wrote:
    > On Fri, 30 Dec 2005 21:41:50 UTC, Victor Bien wrote:
    >
    >
    >>All the sockets are occuppied because neither the sound nor
    >>networking chip can be used because of the lack of drivers.
    >
    >
    > Sound has been working on that board with the UNIAUD driver
    > for several years now. I did the initial fix in spring 2003.
    > The network is kinda working with the GENMAC driver, but has
    > issues (especially when running Novell NetWare Client).
    >

    Yes thanks I got my on-board sound working with the latest UNIAUD
    driver. I vaguely recollect trying some time ago but was not successful
    and had to stay with my SB Live 5.1. Perhaps I did not try hard enough
    to resolve the irqs previously. With my intensive attempt to get a
    mainboard working in recent days I have had an aggravating time getting
    the irqs right. Everytime you change a board you have to go thru the
    whole process again! I still couldn't separate the video irq from the
    multimedia one. One arrangement gave sound but it was distorted...

    I tried the GENMAC driver again and still got nothing.

    With one slot free I tried my VIA PCI USB 2 add-in card; still no go.
    The nearest to some action was when I have the line:
    BASEDEV=USBMSD.ADD /FLOPPIES:0 /REMOVABLES:2 /REMOVABLE_AS_FLOPPY /V
    in config.sys. Drive I (the first drive after my last HD drive H
    becomes an accessible drive but it doesn't show any files.

    I'm not going to pursue this too hard because that Gigabyte
    GA-8KVM800M board DID show an accessible drive letter! So when I get
    another one I'll probably run with that.

    It's all very hard and tedious with uncertain results...

    _By_the_way_
    I suddenly realised (out of looking at all these mainboards in the
    market place) why manufacturers have so many different models. Apart
    from catering to different CPU chips they cater to nVIDIA, Uli (aka
    ALi), SIS and VIA chipsets. The Gigabyte board which nearly wrecked my
    boot volume has the ULi chipset whereas the board which the flash bios
    process went bad had the VIA chipset. The Asus A7N266 which I'm
    currently running fine on (and have been for three years) uses nVIDIA.
    Does that suggest to keep OS/2 away from the ULi chipset?

    --
    To reply by e-mail edit this address to the correct form: vbien at
    attglobal dot net

  4. Re: Mainboards: an issue for OS/2

    Sir:

    Victor Bien wrote:
    > Ruediger Ihle wrote:
    >> On Fri, 30 Dec 2005 21:41:50 UTC, Victor Bien
    >> wrote:
    >>
    >>
    >>> All the sockets are occuppied because neither the sound nor
    >>> networking chip can be used because of the lack of drivers.
    >>
    >>
    >> Sound has been working on that board with the UNIAUD driver for
    >> several years now. I did the initial fix in spring 2003. The
    >> network is kinda working with the GENMAC driver, but has issues
    >> (especially when running Novell NetWare Client).
    >>
    >
    > Yes thanks I got my on-board sound working with the latest UNIAUD
    > driver. I vaguely recollect trying some time ago but was not
    > successful and had to stay with my SB Live 5.1. Perhaps I did not
    > try hard enough to resolve the irqs previously. With my intensive
    > attempt to get a mainboard working in recent days I have had an
    > aggravating time getting the irqs right. Everytime you change a
    > board you have to go thru the whole process again! I still couldn't
    > separate the video irq from the multimedia one. One arrangement gave
    > sound but it was distorted...
    Disable the video irq. It is not used.
    > I tried the GENMAC driver again and still got nothing.
    >
    > With one slot free I tried my VIA PCI USB 2 add-in card; still no go.
    > The nearest to some action was when I have the line:
    > BASEDEV=USBMSD.ADD /FLOPPIES:0 /REMOVABLES:2 /REMOVABLE_AS_FLOPPY /V
    > in config.sys. Drive I (the first drive after my last HD drive H
    > becomes an accessible drive but it doesn't show any files.
    >
    > I'm not going to pursue this too hard because that Gigabyte
    > GA-8KVM800M board DID show an accessible drive letter! So when I get
    > another one I'll probably run with that.
    >
    > It's all very hard and tedious with uncertain results...
    >
    > _By_the_way_ I suddenly realised (out of looking at all these
    > mainboards in the market place) why manufacturers have so many
    > different models. Apart from catering to different CPU chips they
    > cater to nVIDIA, Uli (aka ALi), SIS and VIA chipsets. The Gigabyte
    > board which nearly wrecked my boot volume has the ULi chipset whereas
    > the board which the flash bios process went bad had the VIA chipset.
    > The Asus A7N266 which I'm currently running fine on (and have been
    > for three years) uses nVIDIA. Does that suggest to keep OS/2 away
    > from the ULi chipset?
    >
    No.
    --
    Bill
    Thanks a Million!

  5. Re: Mainboards: an issue for OS/2

    William L. Hartzell wrote:
    > Sir:
    >

    [cuts]

    >>
    >> Yes thanks I got my on-board sound working with the latest UNIAUD
    >> driver. I vaguely recollect trying some time ago but was not
    >> successful and had to stay with my SB Live 5.1. Perhaps I did not
    >> try hard enough to resolve the irqs previously. With my intensive
    >> attempt to get a mainboard working in recent days I have had an
    >> aggravating time getting the irqs right. Everytime you change a
    >> board you have to go thru the whole process again! I still couldn't
    >> separate the video irq from the multimedia one. One arrangement gave
    >> sound but it was distorted...
    >
    > Disable the video irq. It is not used.

    On this board there is no provision to do that. I've struck various
    can't dos of this type on the various boards I've come across over the
    years.

    >
    >> I tried the GENMAC driver again and still got nothing.
    >>
    >> With one slot free I tried my VIA PCI USB 2 add-in card; still no go.
    >> The nearest to some action was when I have the line:
    >> BASEDEV=USBMSD.ADD /FLOPPIES:0 /REMOVABLES:2 /REMOVABLE_AS_FLOPPY /V
    >> in config.sys. Drive I (the first drive after my last HD drive H
    >> becomes an accessible drive but it doesn't show any files.
    >>
    >> I'm not going to pursue this too hard because that Gigabyte
    >> GA-8KVM800M board DID show an accessible drive letter! So when I get
    >> another one I'll probably run with that.
    >>
    >> It's all very hard and tedious with uncertain results...
    >>
    >> _By_the_way_ I suddenly realised (out of looking at all these
    >> mainboards in the market place) why manufacturers have so many
    >> different models. Apart from catering to different CPU chips they
    >> cater to nVIDIA, Uli (aka ALi), SIS and VIA chipsets. The Gigabyte
    >> board which nearly wrecked my boot volume has the ULi chipset whereas
    >> the board which the flash bios process went bad had the VIA chipset.
    >> The Asus A7N266 which I'm currently running fine on (and have been
    >> for three years) uses nVIDIA. Does that suggest to keep OS/2 away
    >> from the ULi chipset?
    >>
    > No.


    --
    To reply by e-mail edit this address to the correct form: vbien at
    attglobal dot net

  6. Re: Mainboards: an issue for OS/2

    Sir:

    Victor Bien wrote:
    > William L. Hartzell wrote:
    >> Sir:
    >>
    >
    > [cuts]
    >
    >>>
    >>> Yes thanks I got my on-board sound working with the latest UNIAUD
    >>> driver. I vaguely recollect trying some time ago but was not
    >>> successful and had to stay with my SB Live 5.1. Perhaps I did not
    >>> try hard enough to resolve the irqs previously. With my intensive
    >>> attempt to get a mainboard working in recent days I have had an
    >>> aggravating time getting the irqs right. Everytime you change a
    >>> board you have to go thru the whole process again! I still couldn't
    >>> separate the video irq from the multimedia one. One arrangement gave
    >>> sound but it was distorted...
    >>
    >> Disable the video irq. It is not used.
    >
    > On this board there is no provision to do that. I've struck various
    > can't dos of this type on the various boards I've come across over the
    > years.

    It is usually in Bios. Be unusual that it is not there as even Windows
    don't use IRQ for video.
    --
    Bill
    Thanks a Million!
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