VIA EPIA M10000 Motherboard

[routermad]

Hi all

Does any one have comments on the VIA EPIA M10000 motherboard? I'm planning to use this board on a little pet project.

Routermad

 

[ceh4702]

Make sure you get the one with the MPEG2 Decoder Chip! They have a new model out now or very soon with 2 Network ports, but it is designed for servers and has lower grade sound and video.

Max out your memory. There is a lot of onboard integration. Ideally these devices work better with Laptop CDROM's and Hard drives that use less power if that is what you are looking for.

What these things really need is SATA drives so you can use a SATA WD 10,000rpm Raptor hard drive.

Check out:

http://www.mini-itx.com

look for the Via Arena Forum.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[jdeane]

not the answer you want but I have had great success using the Epia M-9000 - only 1 complaint I have to make about it is the on board TV out. You can select in the BIOS both VGA and TV out which is fine until it starts to load the OS, with XP I found that the TV picture would go and not come back until I had connected up a monitor and selected dual monitors from the display setting page. Once this was done I could remove the monitor and leave the TV connected as planned from the start.

Not sure if the M10000 would have the same problem, but I would ask your supplier first if you want to use the TV as the only means of viewing.

Jon

 

[routermad]

Thank you, I will certainly max the RAM memory. More is always good. With regards to the TV out, I wont be using that until after the inital install.

On a temp basis, could one use a std CD ROM, but powered separately? Its just that after the install, I wont need this unit.

I think these main boards are great, it certainly has lots of potentials depending on the applications. With two ethernet ports, I think it will be better as router or firewall box rather than a full blown server.