VIA + Live + G400: did anyone manage?

[Livius]

Hi! I tried to build a system a few days ago consisting of an Epox 3VBA motherboard (Apollo Pro Plus UDMA66), a SB Live! and a G400. The G400 worked fine with the mobo but when I added the Live! (no IRQs shared, SB16 Emulation disabled) all hell broke loose. Every time I booted into Win98 (SE) I got some registry error message and after a while I even started getting even major screen corruption.

I replaced the G400 with the G200 in my own system and got identical problems. I later used a PCI ATI board and things calmed down but now I get tremendous CPU utilization when using the Live! Did anyone manage to combine the Apollo Pro+ (or any other VIA chipset for that matter) with a Live! and a matrox AGP card?

[Livius]

Sorry, I forgot to post the specs:

Epox 3VBA VIA Apollo Pro Plus mobo w/ UDMA66 AGP 3.59 drivers (tried an older version on the bundled Epox CD as well)

Matrox G400 16MB / G200 8MB, both AGP, tried drv. ver. 5.30 and 5.41 IRQ11 unshared

SB Live! Value drv. 4.06.704 (of 8.26.1999)IRQ 9 unshared (emulation disabled)

[terence]

I've got that exact setup working but with a Epox MVP3G2 mobo. I needed to install via's 4in1 driver to get it to work properly though.

[Livius]

I did install the 4-in-one.

[gbm]

Have you tried Win98 (not SE)? My Epox runs happily with G400 and SB Live! under original 98, but I had serious problems with Win98SE on some other machine.

[mynx]

I have them all working happily. The G400 dropped to 1x after I upgraded to the Live! card from a Diamond S90. Running Windows98se with all updates. PD 5.41, Bios 1.3, directX 7.1a. My only problem is when I tried installing a PCI nic, nothing likes sharing an IRQ with it. Live! wouldn't even let Windows recognise the nic.

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Matrox G400 32mb DH, K6-3/450, Epox MVP3G-M, 128 mb PC 133, WD 10.2gb, Pio 32x CDROM, LS-120, Adaptec 2940U2W, Yamaha CDRW4416, Pio DVD-303, SBlive platinum, 3COM 3c509, HP 712c, HP 6200

[Big Lar]

I have the g400/ sblive Value, and have used them both in an asus p3b-f and a soyo sy6vba133... with no irq conflicts at all.

[paul]

disable your usb/com ports if you dont use them

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k6-3 450 @500 - tyan 1590s bios 1.16 - wdac310100 5400 udma33 - g200 mill sgram w/8mb upgrade & bios 2.6-20 PD 5.41 (DISABLED) - AGP1x (NOT MY CHOICE) - 128MB 10ns sdram - sblive value 3.0 - 4 Boston Acoustics A40's - 3com 3c905b-tx - cable access (28.8k for emergencies) - win98SE
dx7 - V3 steering wheel/pedals - MS sidewinder PRO

[rylan]

I have an Epox MVP3G-M, G400MAX, and SBLive!. I've been running this system trouble free from the day I got my MAX (and even before then when I got my SBLive). Got the MAX on IRQ11, SBLive on IRQ12, Network Card on IRQ10, and USB on IRQ3.

[kjliew]

Using Win98SE installed with "setup /pj" for ACPI enabled. Rock solid on VIA MVP3, G400 32MB DH and SBLive w/ LiveWare 3. If you're Win98SE, install only the AGP driver from VIA website. Make sure it is the latest version 3.59.

[Livius]

Hi!
That's actually what I did. I first installed the VIA 3.59 AGP driver and skipped the rest (Busmaster, IRQ etc.). But it did not work so I tried the rest as well. Something else strange happens: I put an ATI PCI card instead of the Matrox card and the system is stable. I also put my V2 SLI inside but whenever I use games with sound the performance drop is huge. e.g. I get some 42fps in Unreal without the Live! in the system, but as soon as I put the Live! in the score drops to 33fps. On my own system (see signature) there is absolutely no performance drop.

Of course, the exact same components work flawlessly on a ZX motherboard and it seems I will keep it this way although I liked the 3VBA.

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Celeron 500, Soyo 6BA+ IV, 128MB PC100, Mill G200 SDRAM 8MB, V2 SLI, SB Live!, Quantum FB CX 10GB UDMA 66


[This message has been edited by Livius (edited 05 February 2000).]

[DentyCracker]

Make sure that the first driver for the live installed is liveware 3 (or 2.1)