Hi,

On 30 Dec 2001 at 1:24, Richard Rauch wrote:
> > http://www.tweakers.net/meuktracker/628
> 
> Regrettably, I can't read German, so I can only get the general gist
> (``we don't like VIA'' seems to come through again).

actually it is not German, I think they come from the Netherlands. 
The article seems to describe a known problem with the Via chipsets 
that has been discussed here (or in port-386) some time ago, they 
claim that a reader of "http://www.viahardware.com/" made a fix so 
maybe you wish to give this a try, they have an article of ATA/133 
and SCSI/160 Problems with VIA chipsets. 

> Presmably, I'd need an MS-DOS/MS-WINDOWS installation in order to use
> the upgrades?  I seem to recall that these flash upgrades come in the
> form of .EXE files for MS-DOS or MS-WINDOWS.  I'm not sure how I would
> go about running them on my systems.  (^&

I had a FreeDos disk around for that kind of tasks.

> rather have the slower (but working) stuff in there.  (Aside: Why
> should BIOS affect performance of the chipset?  NetBSD doesn't use
> BIOS once NetBSD is booted, does it?)

IIRC the Bios also sets parameters, with PIIIs they even seem to 
manipulate CPU microcode or something, cannot say for shure.

> Still, one would think that there would be a market for a solid
> chipset that worked with AMD CPU's.

I have no problems with the old 750 northbridge and 686a southbridge 
combination. IIRC the discussions on the NetBSD lists showed that the 
problem must be within VIAs northbridge. An article on tecchannel 
indicates that VIAs chipsets can only transfer 96 Bytes per burst PCI 
transfer whereas the Intel Chipsets can transfer 4096 Bytes, I do not 
trust this article, it claims to have included in this test the AMD 
760MP chipset, but do not show numbers or mention it. However the AMD 
chipset may be worth a try and I even think someone mentioned they 
would work with NetBSD.

HTH

mike