Creative SB Live Value & KT7A

[sennister]

I have been having alot of stability problems trying to set up my Abit KT7A. I have gone through everything on Paul's Unofficial ABIT KT7 site. By trying some things from that site things have gotten better. I found that as soon a I add my Creative SB Live Value Win 98 either has random reboots or just locks up. In Win 2K Pro I get random stack dumps. I have tried the SB in every PCI slot in teh computer with the exception of PCI 5 (My NIC resides there). I had the best luck with PCI 4 but eventually had errors there as well. I have tried different RAM, different HSF (CPU temp 79F-105F), case fans, and NICs. Now my CD ROM just stopped working. I swapped it with one from my PIII 800. Here is a run down of everything in the system. All components are less than a month old.

case Enlight (AMD Approved Power Supply)
MOBO ABit KT7A
Processor AMD 850 T-bird
RAM 256MB PC133 Micron
HSF Cooler Master DP5-6H11
CDROM Creative 52x (Now Dead)
Video CRD ATI Rage Fury Pro AGP VIVO 32MB
NIC 3COM 3C905C-TX
Sound Card Creative SB Live Value

[Lycia]

Originally posted by sennister:
I have been having alot of stability problems trying to set up my Abit KT7A. I have gone through everything on Paul's Unofficial ABIT KT7 site. By trying some things from that site things have gotten better. I found that as soon a I add my Creative SB Live Value Win 98 either has random reboots or just locks up. In Win 2K Pro I get random stack dumps. I have tried the SB in every PCI slot in teh computer with the exception of PCI 5 (My NIC resides there). I had the best luck with PCI 4 but eventually had errors there as well. I have tried different RAM, different HSF (CPU temp 79F-105F), case fans, and NICs. Now my CD ROM just stopped working. I swapped it with one from my PIII 800. Here is a run down of everything in the system. All components are less than a month old.

case Enlight (AMD Approved Power Supply)
MOBO ABit KT7A
Processor AMD 850 T-bird
RAM 256MB PC133 Micron
HSF Cooler Master DP5-6H11
CDROM Creative 52x (Now Dead)
Video CRD ATI Rage Fury Pro AGP VIVO 32MB
NIC 3COM 3C905C-TX
Sound Card Creative SB Live Value

You already know what the problem is. You state as soon as yo uadd the SBLive you get lock ups. SB is the reason. Go to www.viahardware.com and look for information regarding the SBLive and VIA Based motherboards. They have some patches that may or may not work. I suggest, however, is going out and buy another sound card, such as a Turtle Beach or philips. And never ever spend money on Creative's Crappy products.

[Darren Wilson]

Just hold one one minute

There is not a problem with ALL SB Live cards & VIA 686B chipsets. If there was then I wouldn't have one in my own machine here that is WORKING with no glitches or hiccups at all!!!! Most of the problems stem with the 5:1 version of the card although there has been an instance of a a few Values also playing up. The issue causing the lockups is PCI Timings which there is a semi-fix for. Also the problem ONLY seems to be on VIA 686B chipsets and not others. This to me points to a VIA problem not Creative and VIA are working on a 'true' fix for it (as stated on VIA Hardware and other sites. Personally, I don't know anyone personally (and I am don't mean people over the Internet) who has this problem with SB Live! cards.

[Schui]

how many pci cards are on your system.?
3 or less usually causes no prob, 4 or more.... no chance.

Also, the SBLive has SB emulation, requiring IRQ 5. IRQ5 is required by the Highpoint controller. Disable that if you're not using the raid. But try the 3 pci cards or less idea first.....!Schui

[sennister]

The only cards in the machine are the ones listed. The video (AGP), a NIC (PCI, and then KABOOM when I add the Sound card (PCI). The system only runs with the one PCI card. I'm not adding a modem or any other cards at this time. I have had some luck with installing the card and the software. Then I shut down. Pull the card uninstall the software but leave the drivers. Restart and put the card back in and only have the drivers installed. As for the Highpoint drivers. This is the KT7A without the RAID. It's my understanding that the Highpoint drivers are only for the MOBO with the built in RAID. I wanted to try a different sound card but all but one machine have built in sound. The one with a card has the Creative SB Live MP3+ 5.1 and it works like a charm. That is on my PIII 800. Thanks for any help you can provide.

[Underseer]

Your system might be picky about which slots you put PCI cards in. Find out which slots share resources with which other devices.

Make sure you get the latest 4-in-1 and USB Filters from VIA (http://www.viatech.com/).

Check the Microsoft Knowledge base for various patches for VIA AGP and VIA ATA 100 (assuming you have an ATA 100 controller).

Lastly, until Creative Labs comes out with better drivers and your mobo manufacturer comes out with the relevant BIOS update for the SBLive/686b incompatibility, don't use that SBLive on your AMD/VIA system.

[Darren Wilson]

The KT7 family of boards (including the A models) use the below IRQ configuration. If the system is running in ACPI mode then nearly all the Plug N Play cards will use the same IRQ regardless of BIOS setting. Easiest way to get around this is to set IRQ5 to Legacy/ISA in the BIOS (this should be done anyway regardless of ACPI or not) to avoid conflicts with the Highpoint controller.
Also the following IRQ resources are set to the PCI slots:-

• "INT Pin 1": AGP card and PCI Slot 1
• "INT Pin 2": PCI Slot 2 and PCI Slot 3 and ACPI (if enabled)
• "INT Pin 3": PCI Slot 5 (and HPT370 controller in KT7/A-RAID)
• "INT Pin 4": PCI Slot 4 and PCI Slot 6 and USB

Note you can force a particular IRQ number to be used by a particular "INT Pin #" using the PNP/PCI Configurations Setup in the BIOS. This allows you to force a certain slot to use a specific IRQ. You should not normally need to do this. Note that if you have ACPI enabled, Windows will ignore the assignments made in the BIOS and allow ACPI to determine this.

If you have an AGP card and two PCI devices, but no ACPI, USB or HPT370 enabled, you can put those devices in

• slots 2 and 4, 5 or 6
• slots 3 and 4, 5 or 6
• slots 4 and 5
• slots 5 and 6

If you have an AGP card, two PCI devices and ACPI, but no USB or HPT370 enabled, you can put those devices in

• slots 4 and 5
• slots 5 and 6

If you have an AGP card, two PCI devices and USB, but no ACPI or HPT370 enabled, you can put those devices in

• slots 2 and 5
• slots 3 and 5

If you have an AGP card, two PCI devices and HPT370, but no ACPI or USB enabled, you can put those devices in

• slots 2 and 4 or 6
• slots 3 and 4 or 6

If you have an AGP card and two PCI devices and ACPI and USB but no HPT370 enabled, then

• slot 5 will have its own IRQ

AMD recommend installing cards one at a time, shutting down and powering off between the addition of each card. They recommend installing cards in the following order:

• AGP card
• Voodoo I or Voodoo II Cards: Since these cards do not require an IRQ address, it is recommended that they be installed after the successful installation of your operating system. They do require a PCI slot
• Any ISA card
• Internal Modem (PCI)
• Sound Card (PCI or ISA)
• Network Card, a.k.a. NIC (PCI or ISA)
• DVD Devices requiring Dxr3 Decoder Board (PCI)Note: Some video decoder boards require two (2) IRQs for complete functionality. Check with your video decoder card manufacturer for video decoder support and requirements
• SCSI Adapter (PCI)
• Any others

If you have any other problems or such with the Motherboard, most of the answers to questions can be found Here

[ch1as]

Well Im not the expert but I have the live with the kt7a-raid which I had the same problems you did. I placed the creative in the 3rd PCI slot, Linksys nic in the last PCI slot and kept my first PCI slot open. It took me a couple of days to figure out the right recipe to finally get this stable. Also Ive found the RAID (Both set as master and 1 40 gig ata100 with 1 13 gig ata 66 both 7200 running RAID 0)is running more stable then when i was using the basic IDE slots with the highpoint drivers coming off the cd itself (havn't tried updating these yet) and Im doing good with the 4-14.29 drivers still using the YH BIOS on the board. I tried the older ww, wz and the newer Z?? (whatever number , i cant remember) anyways the YH seems most stable with the components Im using.

[[email protected]]

But you see, all this compatability stuff is the main reason to stay Intel. We have used the BH6, BX6, BE6, BE6-2, Asus P2B-s,Cusl2-c w/o audio, and various intel boards. plug any card in anywhere, boot the system and it works. Even our not so bright customers have problems causing issues( other than the internet is down cause I dont got no dial tone, we have alot of thunderstorms and a poorly grounded phone system. Curses to the man who invented surge protectors)

[sennister]

Hey James I'm with you 100% on that one. I'm an Intel man myself. I built this AMD for a customer and I chose AMD to stay with in budget. I had $1500 to spend on a complete system to include LCD monitor. That made things really tight. If I went with Pentium I would have had to go PIII in the 800mhz range. That offers about a 200mhz upgrade later on without a MOBO swap(not much of an improvement). By going AMD I could offer about a 400-500mhz future upgrade with the same MOBO. The P4 woudl have been way over budget. Like an old teacher once said.....

"There are three things GOOD, FAST, and CHEAP. Now, you can only have two. It can be GOOD and FAST, but it's not CHEAP. It can be FAST and CHEAP, but it's not GOOD. It can be CHEAP and GOOD, but it's not FAST."

This seems to apply to everything in life from computers to cars.

[WotsUpDoc]

Erm, I've had simillar effects (endless reboots, Scandisk, reboots, scandisk etc.)
My setup was slightly different.
Under Win Me there was no problem (full system) until I turned on the RAID (minimal system, just video 1 HD) on the Abit KT7 RAID board.
The full system config works mysteriously well under NT (my old 350 W PSU): 3 Ultra ATA 100 harddisks, 1 HD on the RAID controller, Voodoo 5 AGP, 320 (3 memory banks)Mb memory, Adaptec SCSI controller, 1 SCSI CDROM, 2 IDE CD writers, 2 network controllers, SB Live! soundcard, which works great under Win NT, also the RAID controller.
Needless to say it drove me crazy!
The full system worked great (but without the RAID) under Win ME

The solution was only archieved when I got another (400 W) PSU
For more info look at this Windriver forum

[Mope]

What? I have a SB 5.1 with 2K and have never had any problems with it being installed. I have HPT370 as well. My card is in slot 3. These cards have done well in ME and 98. I haven't had any problems with my KT7VA-RAID and AMD 1 GHz processor that I haven't caused myself (and nothing unfixable).

[ilovetheusers]

Sound blaster live on a KT7A and no problems here and it's even got Win ME on it (meaning I'd expect problems).

Perhaps I could suggest trying a different card if this one has conflicts? Maybe a turtle beach. It's pretty close if not the same from what I see argued on the boards.