Re: Iwill DVD266u-RN Stability Fixes [UPDATED]
Update: Well it's Spring and playtime is over. Its been a long haul smoothing out the wrinkles in this system but the information I've received on this site has been helpful, so thanks to all for your input, especially those that took the time to answer my queries personally. This board has been working quite well for some time now and I thought it may prove of some value to leave an update on my experience should someone else jump into the IwillDVD266u-RN pool.
Right now I'm using 3gbs of Corsair XMS3200 memory with the BFG GeForce 7800 OC graphics card and the board seems to be pretty happy with it. For quite awhile my 3 biggest gripes were:
#1. The inability to go into hibernation or sleep mode but now I assume this is just not supported in the BIOS.
#2 The HDD activity LED and Reset switch just wouldn't function.
#3. Failure to complete the RAM count which led to shutting down the system and firing up again. Sometimes this would need to be done 3 times in secession before it completed enough to allow the system to continue. Yeah, I know that I can peruse hitting a key to cancel the count and did so but on occasion if I let it go the problem would surface.
About a month ago I purchased another used board just to see if it would give a different set of problems. I found pretty much identical results but the interesting thing was this board came with all the original literature and within that was a sheet which detailed the changes between the previous Iwill board (Was that a DVD266-r?) and this one. On that sheet was the correct header pin connections and that cured my Reset switch and HDD led problems. In addition, it used the same 704_234.bin BIOS version I was using but had far less problems. Previously I tried all three BIOS versions and did not find any difference but on a hunch used the one from this 2nd board which now will boot cleanly nearly 100% of the time. It now runs at 145fsb X 10.5 for 1.52ghz and is quite speedy. Now if I can just fix the inability to hibernate...............
Update: Well it's Spring and playtime is over. Its been a long haul smoothing out the wrinkles in this system but the information I've received on this site has been helpful, so thanks to all for your input, especially those that took the time to answer my queries personally. This board has been working quite well for some time now and I thought it may prove of some value to leave an update on my experience should someone else jump into the IwillDVD266u-RN pool.
Right now I'm using 3gbs of Corsair XMS3200 memory with the BFG GeForce 7800 OC graphics card and the board seems to be pretty happy with it. For quite awhile my 3 biggest gripes were:
#1. The inability to go into hibernation or sleep mode but now I assume this is just not supported in the BIOS.
#2 The HDD activity LED and Reset switch just wouldn't function.
#3. Failure to complete the RAM count which led to shutting down the system and firing up again. Sometimes this would need to be done 3 times in secession before it completed enough to allow the system to continue. Yeah, I know that I can peruse hitting a key to cancel the count and did so but on occasion if I let it go the problem would surface.
About a month ago I purchased another used board just to see if it would give a different set of problems. I found pretty much identical results but the interesting thing was this board came with all the original literature and within that was a sheet which detailed the changes between the previous Iwill board (Was that a DVD266-r?) and this one. On that sheet was the correct header pin connections and that cured my Reset switch and HDD led problems. In addition, it used the same 704_234.bin BIOS version I was using but had far less problems. Previously I tried all three BIOS versions and did not find any difference but on a hunch used the one from this 2nd board which now will boot cleanly nearly 100% of the time. It now runs at 145fsb X 10.5 for 1.52ghz and is quite speedy. Now if I can just fix the inability to hibernate...............
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