so what is it?

[cdz25]

I have just started a very small computer repair business from home and I would like to clear up information I have heard about amd processor on motherboards with any given chipset crashing under a windows enviroment(win 95,98,98se,me). Now I am talking about older systems with k6-2 processors as well as amd processors in systems 4-5 years old . Is this due to the windows os not configuring hardware,resources and the like on the motherboard or is it because of the multiplier or speed of the amd processors. I have serviced several systems with via chipsets and amd processors and they seem to crash,when reinstalling windows or simply hang during or after installation. Could this just be badly built machines

If I'm not mistaken, K6-2's after 350MHz would not work correctly w/ Windows 95. I don't recall excatly what it was, but I do remember M$ had a patch for it.

You might find what you need here . . .

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;192841

[John Prophet]

There is some sort of old patch on AMD systems faster than 550mhz or something like that, lol.


I think some people used to slow em down to under whatever speed it was that caused a problem..if they couldnt find the patch.

I cant remember the exact details....seems I ran into it while working on a FIC VA-503 socket 7 board.

I see this ----> "If you are running Windows 95, you must get a patch from Microsoft before you upgrade your CPU. (Windows 95 had problems with AMD chips above 300 MHz.) If you are running Windows 98, make sure you upgrade to Windows 98 SE. (No particular reason for this, except that the original Win98 was unusually buggy)" here ----> http://lowendpc.com/box/2001/1017.html

So I guess it was a win95 patch.

JP
also



I imagine it is something like this.....people got to used to working on Intel 440BX chipsets...so when working on other stuff they probably forgot to install proper drivers etc.

And possibly AMD wasnt quite 100% Intel compatible back then.

(its communism, plain and simple)

Win95 OSR2 resolved the MHz issue. I am not aware of a patch for earlier versions of Win95 to resolve the frequency detection conflict. However, this problem results in an immediate BSOD on booting into Win95.

As to system stability, there are a few things you can do to resolve most of the problems.

-Disable video and BIOS caching in the BIOS
-Set PnP OS to Disabled in the BIOS
-Let the BIOS direct all IRQ setups
-Install the latest VIA chipset drivers immediately after installing Windows!

VIA and SiS boards were generally quite stable. The worst socket7 chipsets for stability were manufactured by ALi. The ALi AGP controller was poorly engineered at the hardware level, though the latest ALi chipset driver release will help significantly with stability.

Anyway, all three popular manufacturers still provide drivers for their socket 7 chipsets, just check their websites for the downloads.

Robert Richmond

[Peter M]

No, OSR2 did _not_ resolve the MHz issue. It's just that pre-OSR2 W95 didn't even get the patch.
W98 is the first one to fix it w/o patches.

The symptom is that there are a handful of Windows drivers that, suffering from poorest software engineering, crash with K6-2 333 MHz and above and all Athlon/Duron, Cyrix MII 250 MHz and above ("PR333"), and Pentium-4 above 1700 MHz.
Patch available from MS, and if no longer present there, from the AMD web site.

Patch download....

http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/d...ch/Default.asp

I could have sworn MS finally integrated this patch upon release of OSR2.5, but oh well.....

Robert Richmond