D. J. Bernstein
Computer hardware
Motherboards
Why I will never buy another Abit motherboard
In 2000-07, when I was buying my first Athlon,
I heard about a serious bug in the Asus K7V BIOS:
the K7V wouldn't boot when ECC was enabled.
So I bought an Abit KA7 instead.
This was a serious mistake.
Abit habitually makes fraudulent claims of ECC support.
This page gives some examples.
At the beginning of 2001-03,
I sent technical@abit-usa.com a pointer to this page,
and asked for their comments.
They did not respond.
KA7
Abit's announcement of the KA7
claimed that the KA7 ``supports ECC.''
As of 2001-02,
Abit's web pages continue to claim that the KA7 ``supports ECC.''
The KA7 BIOS has an ECC option.
[local copy of www.abit.com.tw/english/press/2000/press27.htm, 2001-02-27]
[local copy of www.abit.com.tw/english/press/2000/press72.htm, 2001-02-27]
[local copy of www.abit.com.tw/english/product/motherboards/ka7.htm, 2001-02-27]
[local copy of www.abit.com.tw/english/product/motherboards/ka7-100.htm, 2001-02-27]
In fact,
according to Peter Heckert,
the KA7's ECC option does not support error correction;
it merely looks for ECC memory.
KT7
``The Abit web site, http://www.abit.com.tw/english/product/kt7-raid.htm,
says: "Supports ECC",''
Andrew E. Schulman (andrex@zzapp.org) said
in a 2000-10-04 16:01:02 PST posting to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.systems.
``I bought a kt-7 raid because on the site it stated: ECC Support !''
Roderick den Haring (hatex@planet.nl) said
in a 2001-01-08 posting to alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.abit.
In fact, the KT7 doesn't support ECC.
``According to our KT7 designer, the ECC function is non-functional,''
TechSupport@ABIT (support@server2.abit.com.tw) said
in a 2000-08-17 20:15:37 PST posting to alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.abit.
``We're planning to remove this option in future BIOS releases.''
VP6
Abit's original specifications for the VP6
claimed that the VP6 ``supports ECC.''
As of 2001-02,
some of Abit's web pages continue to claim that the VP6 ``supports ECC.''
Resellers are continuing to repeat this information;
for example, Micro X-Press's web pages
say that the VP6 ``Supports ECC.''
[local copy of www.abit.nl/english/product/motherboards/vp6.htm, 2001-02-27]
In fact, the VP6 does not support ECC.
``VP6(BIOS: UR) does not support ECC memory module,''
the Abit FAQ says.
According to Peter Seebach, the new manual says that the VP6 ECC option
``checks whether the memory installed is ECC.''