www.abithelp.com

Site has been down for days now. Wasn't very active anyways of late. The admins were doing a lot of work to stop the spammers, maybe it's just more maintenance. But VIA is most likely in cost cutting mode, so they may have just taken the site down. I'm gonna E Mail Fiona Gatt to see what's going up. She is the liason to VIA.

Well the site is back up this morning. Maybe just doing some maintenance?

Well, I was starting to think it was similar to NVIDIA forum. It was hacked on the 10th-ish and went down for Maintenence, then when it was not up by the week end, I emailed and they changed to from Maintenence to a Server Issue and should be up within the following week, then after yet another email, they emailed everyone and changed the status to HACKED and trying to update the security to better safeguard everyones data....

I cannot fully remember why I stopped using the VIA chipsets....remember something about their crappy 4-1 driver and George Breese having to fix their PCI latency sound issue...They are still alive?

Yes, VIA is still very much alive. They make sound chips for Asus boards, they make all kinds of USB and SATA add in cards, as well as EPIA imbedded CPU boards. They actually have a new quad core EPIA chipset board coming out. Of course, all these boards have issues, but not really so much of late. The Asus sound chips are the main problem I (we) have to deal with. It's like a Realtek knock off that didn't quite make the grade.

Think one of the last thing I ever posted on / about there was when XP introduced the software remapped IRQ 9 so that there were now 16-23 and the latency issue this caused....Man that was some time back.

Seems it may have been much wider, a V Bulletin hack. I read on a few other Forums, that other Forums using V Bulletin were down for several days. Steam Forum is V Bulletin, but their security is pretty robust. They did get hacked, tho, think it was late last year or early this year. phpBB seems pretty secure. We have it here, and Hawk has it on Railworks America Forums.

Found it, was Train Sim.com that got hacked, they use V Bulletin. Don't these jerks have anything better to do? Like get a job? Maybe work for a living? I just don't understand it.

Oh, George Breese's patch was aimed at the issues that an add in video card caused. There were conflicting IRQ's. What did VIA call it, "Infinate Loop" some shit like that? But that was resolved once they ditched the "white box" P4 boards. Three RAM slots, but you could only use two because 2&3 "shared". I really loved my Abit AV8 board, even with that VIA chipset. Last of the VIA enthusiast boards. Still running at a friend's house, too. Great board, that one!

I use phpBB on the Hawk & Badger forums as well.

Don't be lulled into a false sense of security though. phpBB can be hacked. It's just a matter of time.
Of course keeping the software up to date is a major plus in keeping hackers at bay, it's still not 100% safeguard.

Besides, hackers can't do a mass forum software hack. It has to be done at the individual site.

Greybear wrote:
I cannot fully remember why I stopped using the VIA chipsets....remember something about their crappy 4-1 driver and George Breese having to fix their PCI latency sound issue...They are still alive?

Humm GB,

I had a couple boards with the 4-1 driver set, never had issues with them, that I recall, seems like a good idea to me. (4 in one divers).

VIA at one time was a big player in the Motherboard market, back in the day. Did the 4 in One's have on on board sound driver as well? Chis

mentioned that hey did. Back then all I used was a Sound Card (Sound Blaster) Audigy 5.1 card is then I stopped, because Sound Blaster

would not release Vista drivers (or win7) for their older Sound cards, they wanted us to all BUY new sound card form them, big mistake IMHO.

There was a dude on-line that made divers for all those cards that worked fine with Vista/Win7. So Sound Blaster had a fit, but the damage

had been done!! Enter really Good On-Board sound cards, Realtech, every board I've used since Sound Blaster screwed us, has been Realtech

and the sound is Excellent. Screw Sound Blaster and shame on them!!

Never looked back since I switched to REALTECH sound...

Blue

I also used to use Audigy cards, but the last card I bought was one of these http://www.htomega.com/striker.html and I've never looked back.
I bought it based on reviews at New Egg, comparing it to reviews of Audigy cards, this one won hands down.

WOW Hawk!!


That's a SWEAT sound card!! The VERY best Sound Card I ever owned,( may still have it? somewhere) is the

Diamond Monster Sound MX300-PCI Win 98

Man it rocked, it used 3d sound aound which is much like 4.1 Sound. I remember they had a demo

on the CD that came with it, where this BEE fly's all around your HEAD, and it sounded just like that, back then it

wsa much better than Audigy, still is IMHO. But I went with Realtech on board sound cards after Win 98.

DIAMOND was a BIG name in Sound and Graphics at one time, I also ran 2 Monster II GFX cards

in what's called today SLI/Crosssfire which again IMHO SUCK. My 2 Moster II cards hooked up together in the back of the PC

kust one very sourt cable, and you had SLI, no drivers or adjustments needed, they just ran as ONE card, kinda like raid. Each card

was 12mb memory together, I had 24 Megs of GFX ram, which back in the day, was a TON of video ram!! Today you need 2 gigs just

about, to run at optimum power, well 1 GIG will do fine really. DDR5 what the hell kinda gimmick is that!! What??

At any rate, my Monster Sound MX300 (pci sound card) was Gold plated as well, a real looker!! Your card reminds me of it.


DIAMOND BABY!!

TurtleBech is/was a big player is sound cards too. My Audigy Gamer Sound Blaster card was sweet, but the drivers were always an issue.

Here's you Sound card:: (SWEET!!!)




My Box Monster II mx300

If I were to buy a new full PCI Sound Card today, I'd go with STRIKER 7.1 (about 75 buck, awesome card)
Link @ Egg:: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6829271001

Bluw