ITE or Super I/O - How to know what to use

Recommended by Wim's BIOS...

I have done some further investigation, and found that the corrupted WININST.400 folder does not appear when I install other hard disks on the VIB878DS board, and also does not appear when I install the one hard disks I mentioned in my previous post onto other boards.

Therefore it does appear that there is actually some kind incompatibility between this board and this hard disk which causes the corrupt WININST.400 folder to be generated when installing Windows. Does anybody know what may cause such an incompatibility? To me almost seems as if a cache somewhere is not clearing under certain circumstances with this drive and board combination.

Just to add that with a new WDC 80GB, 8MB Cache HDD, and Windows 2000, I do not see any strange folders or any indication of corruption.

Have yet to try W98 on this new disk.

I am fairly certain now that the PC Partner VIB878DS board that is in my possession is faulty. Today I tried everything I didn't think I had checked out thoroughly enough, including P-ATA cables, mice, serial port header cables, power supplies, hard disks, CD-ROM drives and more, including most importantly, the CPU. The result was always fairly consistent and the result was always consistently dissapointing.

However, I noted once again that BIOS images available for this board offer either the ITE or SMC Super I/O versions. I can find nothing of SMC on this board but the flash chip type is a Winbond and the I/O chip present is an ITE chip? To get it clear:

Does the presence of a physical ITE chip mean I should use the BIOS image for ITE Super I/O? I think yes.

Secondly, I was looking for a way to determine and verify what image I currently have flashed onto the chip. ITE is not mentioned on the POST screen, but the only clue is the line that says "(BIOS-I)".

Since this board is not an Intel board, does not have an Intel chipset, and does not have an Intel flash chip type the only thing I thought "BIOS-I" might indicate is "BIOS-ITE" as opposed to "BIOS-S" for ""BIOS-SMC". Is this correct? I think yes - BIOS-I means BIOS-ITE. Also, does BIOS-I mean that the ITE version of the BIOS image is currently flashed onto the board or does it mean that the system is expecting the ITE version of the BIOS image to be present. I think it means that the ITE version of the BIOS image is the current image on the flash chip.

Any guru who has knowledge in this area would be most welcomed if they could share it with me - it would help me out it my current situation and be handy knowledge for the future.

Thanking in advance.

[ajzchips]

PCPARTNER uses the BIOS-I tag to indicate that the BIOS size is 128KB (I Mbit).

OK so BIOS-I has nothing to do with ITE Super I/O.

But the fact that the actual board has ITE chips mounted and not SMC - I take it this means the ITE BIOS image is the correct image for the board - is this correct?