Conquering the Athlon optimization troubles

Conquering the Athlon optimization troubles

[David Hollister]

Hey folks,

The last thing I was going to try to do to get my system working with Athlon 
optimization was to flash my BIOS to the latest rev.  Unfortunately, I 
discovered that my BIOS was apparently locked and would not take an update.

My motherboard is the Epox 8KTA3+, and I'm running an Athlon 1.4GHz.

Epox was kind enough to mail me a new BIOS chip to replace my locked chip.  This 
chip contained a version of the BIOS that I believe was dated 8/6/2001 (I don't 
feel like rebooting again to find out).  Suffice it to say, that version is not 
listed on their website, but there is an even newer one.  For anybody with the 
8KTA3 or 8KTA3+, the BIOS page is located at 
http://www.epox.com/html/english/support/motherboard/bios/8kt3.htm

Anyway, I was running the BIOS dated 3/5/2001 up until now.

The point to all this is that with the newer BIOS, my machine is now up and 
running absolutely fine with Athlon optimization turned on.

Happy day (well, as happy as a day can be this week)

-- 
David Hollister
Driversoft Engineering:  http://devicedrivers.com
Digital Audio Resources: http://digitalaudioresources.org

Re: Conquering the Athlon optimization troubles

[Anton Altaparmakov]

On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, David Hollister wrote:
> My motherboard is the Epox 8KTA3+, and I'm running an Athlon 1.4GHz.
> 
> Epox was kind enough to mail me a new BIOS chip to replace my locked
> chip.  This chip contained a version of the BIOS that I believe was
> dated 8/6/2001 (I don't feel like rebooting again to find out).  Suffice
> it to say, that version is not listed on their website, but there is an
> even newer one.  For anybody with the 8KTA3 or 8KTA3+, the BIOS page is
> located at http://www.epox.com/html/english/support/motherboard/bios/8kt3.htm

Maybe you meant 9/6/2001. That is the latest available version. From only
5 days ago.

> Anyway, I was running the BIOS dated 3/5/2001 up until now.

That was ancient! There were quite a few releases between then and now.

> The point to all this is that with the newer BIOS, my machine is now up and 
> running absolutely fine with Athlon optimization turned on.

Congratulations! (-: I would recommend you to run a long memtest86 as well
in particular tests 5 and 8. - They are the ones that used to fail for me
with the inappropriate memmory settings...

Best regards,

	Anton
-- 
Anton Altaparmakov <aia21 at cam.ac.uk> (replace at with @)
Linux NTFS maintainer / WWW: http://linux-ntfs.sf.net/
ICQ: 8561279 / WWW: http://www-stu.christs.cam.ac.uk/~aia21/

Re: Conquering the Athlon optimization troubles

[David Hollister]

Anton Altaparmakov wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, David Hollister wrote:
> 
>>My motherboard is the Epox 8KTA3+, and I'm running an Athlon 1.4GHz.
>>
>>Epox was kind enough to mail me a new BIOS chip to replace my locked
>>chip.  This chip contained a version of the BIOS that I believe was
>>dated 8/6/2001 (I don't feel like rebooting again to find out).  Suffice
>>it to say, that version is not listed on their website, but there is an
>>even newer one.  For anybody with the 8KTA3 or 8KTA3+, the BIOS page is
>>located at http://www.epox.com/html/english/support/motherboard/bios/8kt3.htm
>>
> 
> Maybe you meant 9/6/2001. That is the latest available version. From only
> 5 days ago.

No.  I just rebooted to check.  It's dated 8/16/2001.  Strange.

>>Anyway, I was running the BIOS dated 3/5/2001 up until now.
>>
> 
> That was ancient! There were quite a few releases between then and now.

But I couldn't update because my BIOS chip was locked.

>>The point to all this is that with the newer BIOS, my machine is now up and 
>>running absolutely fine with Athlon optimization turned on.
>>
> 
> Congratulations! (-: I would recommend you to run a long memtest86 as well
> in particular tests 5 and 8. - They are the ones that used to fail for me
> with the inappropriate memmory settings...

Thanks for the suggestion.



-- 
David Hollister
Driversoft Engineering:  http://devicedrivers.com
Digital Audio Resources: http://digitalaudioresources.org

Re: Conquering the Athlon optimization troubles

[brian]

> On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, David Hollister wrote:

> > My motherboard is the Epox 8KTA3+, and I'm running an Athlon 1.4GHz.
> > The point to all this is that with the newer BIOS, my machine is now
> > up and running absolutely fine with Athlon optimization turned on.

On Fri, Sep 14, 2001 at 01:28:45AM +0100, Anton Altaparmakov wrote:
> Maybe you meant 9/6/2001. That is the latest available version. From only
> 5 days ago. ...
> Congratulations! (-: I would recommend you to run a long memtest86 as well
> in particular tests 5 and 8. - They are the ones that used to fail for me
> with the inappropriate memmory settings...

I have an Epox 8KTA3+ Duron 900MHz system running linux 2.4.9ac5.
I oopses to death during boot of Athlon/Duron kernels, works fine
with K6 style kernels.

I flashed the BIOS with the 9/6/2001 BIOS upgrade, and the Athlon
optimized kernel dies in exactly the same way it did before.

-- 
Brian Litzinger <brian@worldcontrol.com>

    Copyright (c) 2000 By Brian Litzinger, All Rights Reserved