Biostar K8VGA-m

[dbwarthen]

1st post, go easy.

To be blunt, I'm frustered beyond belief and would love to simply go off on Biostar. However, I read the sticky and it makes a good point. So I will limit this to my problems with the mobo and the support for the mobo.

Had the board for roughly 6 months now. Really should have replaced it a long time ago, but I'm stubborn. List of problems:

On-board VGA doesn't work. I didn't try it until after a video card had died, so I don't know when it stopped working if it ever worked at all.

Onboard NIC works when it wants to.

Motherboard doesn't detect any of the four network cards I have laying around.

Anytime a hardware change is made, the mobo looses the Audigy 2 card. It simply doesn't recognize it. Nor will it until you remove all other cards and reset the BIOS to complete defaults and move the card to another PCI slot. I know Audigy 2s can be a pain to work with sometimes, but this is ridiculous.

I have yet to recieve a response to any e-mail sent to Biostar's technical support.

I dare anyone to try to find a link to WINFlasher on Biostar's site....any of them.

And for the SPCR specific problem:
The product info sheet specifically says "CPU/System Fan Speed Controller" (sorry for link to Taiwan site, direct link to US site wasn't working). Somewhere, I believe on the main Taiwan site, I even saw screenshots of the BIOS that looked to support it. However, I can no longer find those screenshots.

I have tried all three BIOS updates released for this mobo. I have contacted Biostar five times about this one issue, never got a response though. I have played with Speedfan for hours. I've poured over the BIOS in vain attempts to find a hidden menu. I've downloaded every single utility Biostar has on their site. I've installed Warpspeeder a thousand times (hardware monitor utility, only get a report on the condition of my 12+ volt rail). Nothing. No fan control of any type. Just ain't there. Spec sheets lie + shoddy tech support? Or simple incompetence + bad website design? Either way, not a good combo.

Needless to say, I will never purchase another Biostar product again. The simple fact that you can't even find links to basic utilities on their site says volumes. Add to that the little ad for that basic utility on every spec sheet that takes you to a press release and it becomes even more frusterating.