Thanks,
I am, as I said, using the Abit board at the moment. I tried all the slots and ended up with the SB in slot 3 (not shared) using the V3.0 SB software download.
256MB PC133 (Kingston).
HDD is a 30Gb IBM UDMA100.
Video card a Matrox G400 (not Max).
Monitor Philips P150 LCD.
Pioneer 16 x DVD
Plextor 12/10/32A
USB ZIP250
USB Smartcard reader
USB Netgear network adaptor.
That is all I have installed at the moment (hardware).
The problem,now, is with trying to get a network card/adaptor up and running to connect it to my ADSL connection. Either a PCI or USB network adapator just get a WIN2000 BSD (memory violation)and the machine reboots. I plug in a smartdrive reader and my zip becomes an unknown mass storage device etc.
Trying all the reported USB fixes but no joy yet - which is why I was looking at the 3COM cards.