If you tried all that stuff, then it sounds to me like the controller on the mobo is bad... And yeah tran micro sucks, I don't know anybody that has had good luck with them. However General nanosystems is only about a block away and they have much better prices as well as being more customer service friendly...at least in my experience. Doug -----Original Message----- From: tclug-list-admin at mn-linux.org [mailto:tclug-list-admin at mn-linux.org]On Behalf Of Austad, Jay Sent: Sunday, November 11, 2001 11:43 PM To: 'tclug-list at mn-linux.org' Subject: [TCLUG] southbridge hosed? Ok, I got my nice new shiny equipment, and I hooked it all up, tried installing Mandrake and it locks up at various places, always during heavy disk activity (booting, or copying files). I lowered the FSB to 100Mhz, and that allowed me to get through the install after a couple of tries and I finally got Mandrake installed. BTW, this is a Soyo Dragon Plus which has the KT266A and the VT8233ce southbridge on it with an Athlon 1700+ and Micron PC2100 CAS 2 memory (2 256 MB sticks). Anyway, after running the bonnie disk benchmarking utility, the machine locks up during the test. Occasionally, /var/log/messages will get several hundred lines of binary data in it when it locks. I've also tried installing FreeBSD and Windows 2000, and it locks with both of those also. I've removed all of my extra peripherals except for my video card, disabled all onboard stuff, changed every cable, changed the power supply, changed the drive, tried each stick of RAM individually (small chance of BOTH sticks being bad), and the only piece of hardware I haven't changed is the motherboard and CPU. I've also tried booting from the onboard Promise IDE RAID Bus, and it still locks up. It only locks during heavy disk activity, but the problem doesn't happen as often if I run at 1100Mhz instead of the default 1466Mhz. I've even used the failsafe settings in the BIOS which give "safe" settings to everything, and downgraded to the previous BIOS version. I've also tried using the board outside of the machine just in case it was shorting against the chassis somewhere. Is there something I'm overlooking here? Or do I have a bad board? A friend of mine has the same setup except with Corsair memory and his works fine. I'm going to try his memory tomorrow, and maybe his CPU. I have another board on its way from mwave.com (their customer service is damn good, very painless RMA). I can't say the same for Tran Micro about my memory though. I was told that if I tried my friend's memory and it works, that Tran would only exchange my memory for more Micron or sell me registered Infineon 512MB sticks for double the price, and if it didn't work with my system, too bad because it works with everything they sell. I don't think I'll be buying memory from Tran anymore. Jay _______________________________________________ Twin Cities Linux Users Group Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list