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

[Mark Kirkwood]

Rashid N. Achilov wrote:
> I have some boxes, built on motherboards Gigabyte GB-6VA+ (VIA Apollo Pro 
> chipset). Do not say me, that's bullshit, I know :-/
>
> Some of these boxes works under 4.5-RELEASE, some under Windows 2000. Sometime 
> it should be upgraded on to 6.x branch, but I cannot use it - when I install 
> 6.x on these boxes, I cannot bring up any network interface - link leds on 
> card brights, but no any traffic can pass, even on neighbour box! I see 
>
> xl0: watchdog timeout
> xl0: watchdog timeout
> ...
>
> messages on console.
>
> Later. When connect HDD to motherboard through ordinary (40-wired) cable, 6.x 
> says, that HDD is broken! I see endless messages
>
> DMA_ERROR..., CRC_ERROR... etc
>
> When I change cable to UDMA (80-wired) - all these messages are disapper
>
> Later. When I boot box with "ACPI disabled" network cards works! But box hangs 
> up after about 5-10 minutes of active work. Cooler does not stop but box 
> hangs completely, only reset works.
>   
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?

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!

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!


Cheers

Mark