Date: December 13th, 2002
Article by: Burt Carver (Hardware
Reviewer & Newsposter)
Product was donated by: VIA Technologies
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Company Profile
Head Office Corporate Information
The VIA Platform Solutions Division (VPSD) is an autonomous new business
unit established by VIA. Its aim is to provide our customers with a complete
set of innovative platform building blocks for building high quality,
high performance servers, workstations, PCs, and Total Connectivity devices
that meet the needs of all market segments.
VPSD products include both mainboards and reference system designs such
as the Information PC and InformationStation. Based on VIA's industry-leading
chipset technologies, they not only deliver the highest levels of performance
and reliability, but also come with the most advanced features and technologies
such as DDR266 SDRAM support. As a result, VPSD products help OEMs and
System Integrators increase their competitiveness by speeding up product
time to market and reducing validation cycles.
Product Introduction
The VIA EPIA M-Series Mini-ITX Mainboard is a revolutionary, ultra-compact
x86 platform optimized for today's killer digital applications. At just
17cm x 17cm, Mini-ITX is the world's smallest native x86 mainboard platform,
and is fully compatible with Microsoft® and Linux Operating Systems.
Available with an embedded VIA Eden™ ESP processor core for fanless
systems with ultra low-power requirements, or an embedded VIA C3™
E-Series processor for more demanding digital multimedia applications,
the EPIA M-Series is the perfect platform for a whole range of small form
factor, low-power digital media devices and home entertainment centers.
Product Specification
Let's see what VIA is saying about their motherboard and what is displayed
on their website.
| VIA EPIA-M Mainboard Specification |
| The ultimate platform for the next generation of innovative
digital media devices and home entertainment centers. |
| Processor |
- VIA C3/EDEN EBGA Processor |
Chipset
|
- VIA CLE266 North Bridge
- VT8235 South Bridge |
System Memory
|
- 1 DDR266 DIMM socket
- Up to 1GB memory size |
| VGA |
- Integrated VIA CastleRock AGP graphics with MPEG-2 decoder |
| Expansion Slots |
- 1 PCI |
| Onboard IDE |
- 2 X UltraDMA 133/100/66 Connector |
| Onboard Floppy |
- 1 x FDD Connector |
| Onboard LAN |
- VIA VT6103 10/100 Base-T Ethernet PHY |
| Onboard Audio |
- VIA VT1616 6 channel AC'97 Codec |
| Onboard TV Out |
- VIA VT1622 TV out |
| Onboard 1394 |
- VIA VT6307S IEEE 1394 Firewire |
| Onboard I/O Connectors |
- 1 USB connectors for 2 additional USB 2.0 ports
- 2 1394 connectors for 2 1394 ports
- Front-panel audio connectors (Mic and Line Out)
- CD Audio-in connector
- SIR connector
- CIR connector
- Wake-on-LAN, Wake-on-Ring
- CPU/Sys FAN/Fan 3
- System intrusion connector
- 1 I2C connector
- 1 LVDS connector (Optional)
- Serial port connector for second com port |
| Back Panel I/O |
- 1 PS2 mouse port
- 1 PS2 keyboard port
- 1 Parallel
- 1 RJ-45 LAN port
- 1 Serial port
- 2 USB 2.0 ports
- 1 VGA port
- 1 RCA port (SPDIF or TV out)
- 1 S-Video port
- 3 Audio jacks: line-out, line-in and mic-in; can be switched to
6 channel output |
| Application |
- VIA FliteDeck™ Luxurious Utility
- MissionControl-H/W Monitoring, Remote SNMP management
- FlashPort-Live BIOS Flash
- SysProbe-Live DMI Browser |
| BIOS |
- Award BIOS
- 2/4Mbit flash memory |
| System Monitoring & Management |
- CPU temperature monitoring
- CPU voltage monitoring
- Wake-on-LAN, Keyboard-Power-on, Timer-Power-on- System power management
- AC power failure recovery |
| Form Factor |
- Mini-ITX (4 layer)
- 17 cm x 17 cm |
Let's get right into the review...
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