Beware the BIOS APIC Setting

Hello all:
Some of you may have noticed that I've done a lot of postings about problems
with a system which I'd upgraded with a high-end Soyo motherboard. These
problems included:
1. Installing the SCSI driver would hang the system, whether during install
or manual loading of the module.
2. No version of Mandrake I could get to install would communicate to any
other machine via any NIC.
3. Red Hat 8 and 9 both had a nasty habit of freezing when the screen saver
was on. The logs would show a series of "Dazed and confused" messages.

I thought I'd let you know that I solved at least the first two problems
(haven't checked #3 yet), more or less by accident.  I was checking the
system BIOS, and, at a whim, I disabled APIC support (I wasn't even sure what
that was at the time.  I know now that it's an extended version of PCI
interrupt support, but I wonder why it was hosing the system so badly.)
I then reinstalled Mandrake 9.1, and everything worked!  I'm ecstatic, but
what an incredible pain it was finding the cause. I now think I was unjustly
accusing my old Initio SCSI board - I bought a new AP10 card, which kudzu at
first didn't see until I realized I had to run the board's configuration
utility. At this point, the AP-10 ALSO hung the Mandrake install - at least
until I changed the APIC setting. I suppose I could return the new SCSI card
to Fry's and get my $50 back but, NFW. It works and I'm not opening that
case up again unless I hear chipmunks running around in there.

Anyway, I thought I'd let you all know in case some hapless soul out there
encounters the same problem I did.

Vaughn