Steve, do you actually have many other cards plugged in?

: : : has anyone managed to get a VIA 6202 based add on card to work? with any other PCI cards actually plugged in, that is. horrible chipset!!

: I have a CompUSA generic brand card with this chip. It works fine for me. I have three external hard drives, an external DVD+RW, Epson 2450 scanner and Dlink high speed hub. I haven't had any problems since upgrading to Windows SP-1. I have done a lot of home video capturing directly to my external harddrives and use them for external backup. No problem.

: The card coexists nicely on my AMD 1800XP system VIA 266 chipset and with my video capture firewire card(VIA 6306 chip).

: Before Windows SP-1 I had to keep my external harddrives powered off until Windows booted. Then turn the drives on afterward. For some reason Windows XP (before the SP-1 patches) would not properly mount the external drives if they where powered during boot-up.