Second Look at VP6

Second Look at the VP6
by: MTP

BIOS:
Lets start with the basics. I finally flash the bios to wk version. Setting up the bios is extremely friendly with the patented Soft Menu III.
Using the "user define setting" I have the 700E chips running as 933 (133fsb). Set "speed error" to disable so that you can over-clock. Voltages I changed and added a little to VCORE and Vcc, just make sure everything would run smooth.

Now remember I placed the hard-drive on IDE2. By default in bios IDE2 is disabled. You must go into bios and set IDE2 to "auto" or whatever hardware you place on it will not be recognize past the bios boot up.

Here is something I stumbled across and seems to have fixed the problem on this and a few other VIA chipset boards. VIA for some reason sees ATA100/66 as scsi once the 4 in 1 drivers are loaded, just look at your hardware devices, everything is scsi, hdd, cdrom. In bios you have boot up menu. Usually floppy, hdd-0, CD-ROM is the standard order. Right below this setting is "boot other option". This allows the bios to search for other hdd to boot from if nothing is found on one of this 3 options. No big deal right, Wrong! This caused a few systems to "lose" hdd-0 if a zip drive was install. This is because the bios saw the zip as hdd-0, and of course there is no o/s on it. So booting up would fail usually saying NTLDR failed to load or missing winnt files. You can duplicate this message without a zip just by switching the "boot other" option to disable. The bios will fail to find the hdd because hdd-0 doesn't exist on the computer, because the 4 in 1 drivers make you hdd-0 into a scsi device. You don't have that selected as a boot option in your menu of 3 choices. So to solve the problem set the second boot device to scsi. Now you can have you zip drive and still boot up with no hassles.

Memory settings are a must for optimal performance. I set all 4 banks to turbo, 4-way interleave, cas2, and time delay to auto. This gives my ram the best performance. All ram will respond to tweaks differently so don't assume your ram can be set the same as somebody elses.

Remember I placed a card in a pci slot that shares the usb controller? While in bios I also disable the usb controller to ensure no conflicts arise. I also disable the Raid controller for now. I will possibly throw a few drives on to it later to test and use the raid functions of this board.

That's all the bios tweaking for now, so lets load some software!

Software Install:
I believe this to be the best order in which to install the software and drivers to eliminate other problems that I have read people having.

1. I started of course with the 4-boot disks to install Win2k. I know you can boot and install off the cd, but I always have better results this way, so I stuck to old habits. As soon as the message flashes across the bottom of the screen "Hit F6 to use third party or scsi controllers" you should hit F5. After the first boot disk is done it will ask you which kernel you wish to install. Using the arrow keys scroll to the top and select ACPI MPS kernel.
You know the rest of the story for installing Win2k so I'm not going to cover that here.
2. Next install Win2k SP1 (soon to be SP2!)
3. Install the 4.29 Final 4 in 1 driver package, let your system reboot as needed. (1 time I believe)
4. Install the 3011 IDE drivers. This will require your system to reboot at least 2 times if not 3. Now this also installs a great little tool called IDE Tools. This app will show you the ide controller, what hardware is install on each controller and what speed it is running (PIO, UDMA 33, 66, 100). When this software is loaded and the system is done rebooting, you can check under system properties, hardware devices, and the ide controller should be listed as UDMA controllers.

Now would be the time to install your kicking video Nvidia, Radeon, etc.. drivers.

Now before I do anything else (installing office, test apps, etc…), I also check the device manager to ensure everything is recognized and drivers are loaded correctly. Hey, it's a damn good idea I think.

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