Support of VIA Apollo Pro in 6.x is completely broken?

[Mark Kirkwood]

Rashid N. Achilov wrote:
> On Sunday 21 October 2007, Mark Kirkwood wrote:
>
>   
>> Hmm interesting -  I  couldn't actually find any specs for a G*B*-6VA+ 
>> (only a GA-6VA+)... is it a VIA Apollo Pro 133A chipset with slot-1 
>> P-II/III?
>>     
> Sorry, of course GA-6VA+. It is VIA Apollo Pro with Socket 370. Description at
> http://tw.giga-byte.com/Products/Motherboard/Products_Spec.aspx?ProductID=1442
>
>   
>> If so I've run 6.x (a while ago so probably 6.0 or 6.1) on a Tyan 
>> Trinity 400 (same chipset and cpu support)... and I used a 3Com 
>> office-connect ethernet (xl based) card....without any issues. Maybe see 
>> if Gigabyte have a more recent BIOS update for the board and update one 
>> of them and re-test!
>>     
> Newest BIOS for this mb is F8. These boxes already has F8. Some (at least 
> three) boxes has completely similar troubles - so I think, it in chipset 
> support. 4.5 has not ANY these troubles.
>
>   
>> On the ATA cable front, assuming the chipset is as I guessed, the ATA 
>> controller is ATA-66 capable, so yeah, best to use an 80-wire cable and 
>> get *some* IO speed out of these old things!
>>     
>
> Of course, best to use speedup. But, wheh I do not use, I shoud receive 
> downgraded ,but working system, not false CRC ERROR!
>   

Ah - right... after looking at the manual - your chipset is different 
from my old Tyan (T82C693 & VT82C596A vs T82C694X & VT82C596B) ... so 
its possible that there has not been much testing for it on later 
releases... altho it still seems odd that VIA suport is broken - for 
instance I'm currently using a VIA Apollo Pro 266T chipset based box 
right now running 6-STABLE to type this (Supermicro P3TDDE)....

Also looks like your south-bridge will only do ATA-33... so I would 
expect that the 40 wire cable would be ok... so... hmm so not too much 
help from me... hopefully someone else will have some ideas!

Cheers

Mark