Well I was looking in my system properties, and it looks like I have a VIA chipset after all. On my Athlon machine, should that be a problem? Also, I''m curious, what IS a chipset and what does it do? I don''t know anything about this hardware stuff.

And it''s looking more and more to me like Windows ME has some compatibility issues with certain hardware. That''s why one guy has zero problems and Some Guy here has lots of them.

I might actually have to flush it again to get rid of all the software crap I''ve got now and start from the beginning.

quote:

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Original post by SikCiv
I dont like the fact that it takes ages to load and shutdown.. this can be very annoying when you are trying to crash-debug your app, lets hope MS gets things right with WinXP.

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Ummm ok you mean what here?
If a program crashes in win2k, only that program crashes. Win2k doesnt go down with it, which makes win2k an incredibly good OS to code and debug in.

Some Guy: The chipset is basically the stuff that makes the motherboard and CPU work

Since you have a VIA chipset, you might want to download such things as the VIA 4-in-1 drivers, the AMD registry fix, and the VIA USB filter if you haven't already. Doing so can improve performance and stability.

~~~~~~~~~~
Martee
http://www.csc.uvic.ca/~mdill

Edited by - Martee on May 5, 2001 10:03:59 PM

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Original post by SikCiv Ill stick with WinME until WinXP is released. Win2000 is ok for Business purposes and its more stable though I dont like the fact that it takes ages to load and shutdown.. this can be very annoying when you are trying to crash-debug your app, lets hope MS gets things right with WinXP.

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Nonsense, Win2K is a great dev OS. After using it as my main development OS for 6-12 months now (hey, im bad with dates), I cant even bear the idea of Visual Studio being installed on Win98/Me. It just feels wrong. Working on a program in Win98 means rebooting A LOT. Especially when doing DirectX stuff. It is pretty hard to make your program crash hard enough to take Win2K down with it. I think you simply havent taken the time to familiarize urself with the Task Manager (hit CTRL-ALT-DEL, then Task Manager). First try End Tasking the program. If that don''t work, End Task the IDE your using (such as VC++). If things have gone wrong enough for that not to work, you can End Process whatever is refusing to work. Ive had to reboot Win2K because of an error in my code only once. I dont think i can count high enough to tell you how many times Win98 has gown down over even the simplest error (such as an infinite loop). And if your doing any sort of DirectDraw/Direct3D stuff, Win98''s complete total inability to End Task a fullscreen DD/D3D app 90% of the time will drive you nuts.

Hate to ask another question on this, but what is a motherboard anyway? Honestly don''t know. Is it basically what everything else is attached to somehow?


Also, I''ve heard Win2k has a few problems with some high performance video cards. Wouldn''t this pose a threat to developing on/for these cards? Or is there an addon for it that fixes all that?

The motherboard is, as you said, the component which hooks all the other components together. Data travelling between, say, your video card and your CPU, goes through the bus on your motherboard. It does other stuff, too, but that''s kind of the main thing it does.

The main problems that Win2k has with certain video cards are bad drivers. Nvidia makes great drivers, and all their cards run fine. Certain other companies *ahem* ATI *cough*, however, don''t have quite the same quality, and the cards often perform quite poorly in Win2k. But there''s nothing about Win2k itself which prevents it from working properly with any given video card.

~~~~~~~~~~
Martee
http://www.csc.uvic.ca/~mdill

Alright. So basically I've just got a bunch of bad drivers and that's about it.

Now say I decided somewhere along the line to upgrade to a Pentium 4 (probably won't, but anyway). Would it have any problems with my VIA chipset? After all, Null and Void or someone did say VIA has problems with Intel processors.

quote:

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Original quote by Martee

Since you have a VIA chipset, you might want to download such things as the VIA 4-in-1 drivers, the AMD registry fix, and the VIA USB filter if you haven't already. Doing so can improve performance and stability.

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Where do I get all those?

Edited by - Some Guy on May 7, 2001 3:15:17 PM

I have a VIA chipset and finding everything was HELL
I finally came across www.viahardware.com
that had teh only set of drivers that actually DID SOMETHING
especially when it comes to enabling Ultra DMA
you can only do it if you got the special VIA thingy.
The drivers that came on the CD with my motherboard were about as useful as an AOL CD.

quote:

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Original post by Some Guy

Now say I decided somewhere along the line to upgrade to a Pentium 4 (probably won''t, but anyway). Would it have any problems with my VIA chipset? After all, Null and Void or someone did say VIA has problems with Intel processors.

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You''d need an entire new motherboard (and probably power supply), plus two equally sized sticks of RDRAM to even use a P4. If you do upgrade, I''d highly suggest dropping Intel, and going with a Duron or an Athlon. If Intel stops sucking, then you may consider them, but the P4 still isn''t even as good as the P3.


http://druidgames.cjb.net/

quote:

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Original quote by Null and Void

You''d need an entire new motherboard (and probably power supply), plus two equally sized sticks of RDRAM to even use a P4. If you do upgrade, I''d highly suggest dropping Intel, and going with a Duron or an Athlon. If Intel stops sucking, then you may consider them, but the P4 still isn''t even as good as the P3.

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Interesting. I''ve finally found someone who doesn''t like Pentiums-- and it''s the same guy who replies to most all of my posts.

And what is RDRAM? Geez, I thought I knew a lot, but since I started this thread, I''ve been humbled.