My advice:
1. Take the machine back to the vendor and tell them to fix it or
replace it.
2. If #1 is not feasible then use hdparm to turn off dma transfers as a
workaround. I'm not familiar with Mandrake but usually distributions
have as part of their start up scripts some harddrive performance
tweaking that involves calling hdparm to optimize hard drive
operations. Maybe someone here more familiar with Mandrake than I can
tell you how to adjust your configuration to turn off hard drive dma at
startup.
According to the article you reference the problem is only found when
you have two IDE hardrives, each on a different IDE channel, DMA enabled
and are transfering files from one drive to another. If that very
specific condition is not the case then I submit you have defective
hardware and should return/replace it. Another thing to check is for
the presence of the correct power supply for your Athlon board. They're
reputed to be very picky about power.
The promised fix from Via is supposed to be on their site but I didn't
find it. I couldn't even find it in my vast underground caverns of web
links!)
Ed.
"Maureen L. Thomas" wrote:
>
> Here is the link from the regester.
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/18267.html
>
> In winblows it caused icons to disappear and files to just
> vanish. Anything downloaded was incomplete or would not open as an exe
> file but open as gibberish instead.
>
> In Mandrake, icons don't disappear they just loose there link and don't
> work. Any files downloaded (either FTP or HTTP) would not open or if they
> did something was missing from them and they would not install. I did get
> a fix for winblows but I really want a fix for Mandrake. Hope this link
> helps. Moe
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