|
Posted by Thomas
McGuire on October 24, 2000
Company: ASUS Product:
P3V4X
Apollo Pro 133A motherboard
 The
P3V4X represents one of Asus’ VIA chipset based motherboard. It is
a combination of Asus’ technology & VIA’s Apollo Pro
133a chipset (VT82C694X & VT82C596B). On its face this
motherboard offers the best of both worlds, support for the
133Mhz bus, PC133 RAM, AGP4 & in-built support for UDMA66.
Installation
Installing
the motherboard was the general ho-hum uneventful affair (Hook
up IDE, power & other connectors, etc.), until the power
had to be turned on, when my system seemingly refused
to acknowledge my keyboard, & hence any input from me.
After a few hours on my old machine I spotted a FAQ on the
P3V4X & it mentioned possible interference from an unused
spacer in my case, which turned out to be the problem. After
removing it everything was working properly.
For the
first few hours I had quite a few problems (lockups), although
these totally disappeared after installing the 4.24, 4-in-1
drivers from VIA. I
installed the latest
VIA drivers & BIOS
update to ensure maximum compatibility & bug
fixes/optimizations that they contain.
Other than
these slight mishaps I encountered installation went according
to plan, all devices were detected & installed
appropriately in Windows 98 SE & Windows 2000.
Although
in Windows 2000 (dual boot machine) I have one problem.
My Hollywood Plus DVD decoder simply would not install, nor
boot in Windows 2000 if in the BIOS I had Plug & Play
OS set to Yes, setting it to No & the
problem went away – installation went as normal as does boot
up. Although now I toggle this setting On/Off depending on
which OS I intend to boot. A minor inconvenience at the most
though.
My system
For
sake of convenience here is what my system consists of, &
this is what was used during testing.
-
Pentium
3 450Mhz.
-
128MB
RAM (Generic PC-100).
-
Voodoo
5 5500 AGP.
-
Sigma
Designs Hollywood Plus DVD decoder.
-
SoundBlaster
Live! Platinum, with Live! Drive installed.
-
DTT
2500 Speakers.
-
6X
Pioneer DVD drive.
-
Generic
floppy disk drive.
-
US
Robotics Sportster Flash V90 modem – ISA.
-
15”
monitor.
-
Microsoft
Intellimouse Explorer.
-
Generic
keyboard.
All
latest drivers are installed (Official drivers that is) &
any other relevant updates. Unless noted otherwise BIOS
settings & others were set as shown in the appropriate Tweaking
guides.
|
