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"I’ve contacted both the vendor involved and AMI to alert them to the issue. Obviously, I won’t be releasing the name of the vendor, the FTP address, or anything that was seen on the server."

If Adam Caudill won't disclose it then I will.

ftp.asus.com.tw (which is currently down)

It may be aluminium oxynitride (see here rather than sapphire, which is too hard to manufacture in such large pieces (max about 30cm, I believe, and very expensive). Asus do not claim it is sapphire .

Update on this: based on the asus.com page here , it looks like it may not be sapphire at all - it makes no such claim, only that it has has a hardness of 9 (the same as sapphire). Dan

The 8-phase cap-less Power design demonstrates two hardcore commitments of ROG products: ultimate overclocking capability, and ultimate reliability. The 8-phase power design yields unparalleled superiority in the overclocking arena, while the EL cap-less design removes any worries of capacitor problems once and for all.

The 8-phase cap-less Power design demonstrates two hardcore commitments of ROG products: ultimate overclocking capability, and ultimate reliability. The 8-phase power design yields unparalleled superiority in the overclocking arena, while the EL cap-less design removes any worries of capacitor problems once and for all.

forgot the link Asus Pundit

The Apple Mini is just one size too small, and thus sacrifices efficiency (laptop HD, little cooling).

If you are looking for a good office solution look at the ASUS Pundit. They don't get hot, have space for a decent harddisk and DVD drive and are very efficient with desk space (especially when used with a flatscreen and wireless keyboard)

I think we're assuming that it is inferior because it is made in Taiwan

Yes, because no good technology is produced in Taiwan. Next time you go to a computer store, look at the motherboards section...

Nowadays most motherboard companies have alternative homepages, but I remember 5-6 years ago if you needed bios updates or driver patches, the pages were always at www.motherboardbrand.com.tw

It still seems to be the case:
http://www.abit.com.tw
http://www.asus.com.tw
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw
http://www.msi.com.tw
http://www.epox.com.tw
http://www.tyan.com.tw

I bought a Asus A7V333 motherboard over a year ago for $100 (Canadian!). It can do a 4 drive raid, which will only get 1 terabyte. However, added with another couple of systems via some creative mounting (a big thank you to whoever wrote that part of the POSIX standard!), you can create it as large as you want. Simply put these multiple machine together via a 1 gb or 100 mb network, and mount away.

Price per system (in Canadian $):

• Case: $40
• Motherboard: $50
• Cheap video card: $30
• 4 250 GB IDE Hard drives: $750
• Network stuff: $10 (for 10 mb) $40 (for 1 GB)
• Total: $880 per TB (Canadian $!)

Therefore you could have two 4 TB sites (with an extra 1 TB for parity) for only $8800. I would not mind 10 TB.

Well, the thing is damn near every chip manufacturer releases datasheets on their chips. That includes the obvious ones like Intel, Motorola, IBM, Texas Instruments, Fairchild Semiconductor, Microchip, Samsung, Micron, etc... and those are just off the top of my head. I used to have several 3" binders full of datasheeets printed 8 pages per sheet (4 pages front, 4 pages back) per project from other companies whose products we used in our designs. These datasheets were our bibles for the design. For VIA not to release datasheets keeps them from being put in embedded designs, new designs of motherboards, etc. Below is a copy of their policy on datasheets... quite crappy I might add.

"Datasheets are typically only supplied to development partners and large customers under a non disclosure agreement. If you are an end user, please be advised that datasheets will not be supplied. Requests from Open Source Developers and individuals creating system management tools and other utilities for public use are considered on a case by case basis. Driver developers can also find links to information from Microsoft and assistance for Linux developers here. Please complete the request form below and clearly explain what information you need and why.

Thank you for your cooperation." - VIA Datasheets Request Form

Now, you might be saying big deal. All you have to do is fill out a form. Now, notice they will only pay attention to you if you are a big company. Well, in my previous life I used to be an embedded hardware developer. I helped design new circuit boards for a variety of companies. Some big some small. I guarantee you that if I saw a statement like this I would not even contact VIA. We have deadlines to meet and we don't need any of this red tape crap. Its hard enough to get a design out on an impossible deadline without resorting to begging a company to give us info for their stupid products. Most other companies are very forthright with their info and will even make sure a Field Applications Engineer is there to answer your questions. I know alot of other designers will back me up and agree that we don't need one more roadblock. Then again, I guess VIA's focus is just on the few manufacturers that use their products. In addition, I think its pretty sad that they only release their datasheets on a "case by case basis" to OSS developers. Whatever. This makes me wanna hurl my Asus Terminator (with VIA chipset) out the damn window. Now, I know why the Linux kernels are so damn finicky on this system. I was seriously considering buying a little mini-ITX board and case before I saw this, but not anymore. I can use someone else, and I will buy from someone else for personal use as well.

JOhn

I'd like to (at least) third the support of ECS. It would feel awkward for me to consider purchasing other motherboards at this point. ECS is really where it's at. They're dirt cheap, and the quality of them has increased so much in recent memory that they aren't having anywhere near as many problems as you'd think.

We use them in servers all the time at work.

I have a friend who works at a retailer. He says it's mabey 1/200 ECS boards that fail, but, no shit, 1/10 Asus boards bite the turdburger within a year. Know what's cool about that? Asus support SUCKS ASS.

I know there are probably some diehard ASUS fans out there, but let me put it to you this way. I'll grant you asus boards are sometimes inexplicably fast and overclockable. Now, I'll raise you this: Go to their website, http://www.asus.com.tw and click on "N. America". Oooh, this is getting better by the minute. Earlier today, that page was working, but when you clicked on "support" you got a runtime script error. Now, it doesn't even fucking come up with a website! Should be http://usa.asus.com/index.htm, but that's comming up 404 now.

GOD DAMN, I hate asus. Any motherboard manufacturer who's link to "support" is broken on their front page, and has been for over a month, should have their business licence revoked. I've been trying to RMA a never-working ASUS board that was given to me for a MONTH AND A HALF now, and i've submitted the form at least 3 times, and faxed it at least 5.

If you want stability and a freaking motherboard that won't break, get an ECS. You'll be happy, and you'll keep some dollars in your pocket.

~Will

I've always found Asus (they use Award's BIOS) to be another notable exception

ASUS A7M266-D
Gigabyte GA-7DPXDW and GA-7DPXDW-C
MSI K7D Master

The problem with these boards is that they aren't really any cheaper than the Tyan boards (last I checked.) I think the reasons for the high cost are the AMD 760MP/760MPX chipset and the fact that AMD processors suck a lot more juice than the P3s and Celerons that worked on the cheapie Intel dual boards.

Ian

I'd rather have a moderately-priced PC with high quality components than a cheap PC composed of bargain-bin parts. The manufacturers of the higher quality components are going to stand behind their product by continually updating and fixing drivers and firmware and promptly replacing the component if it goes bad. You just aren't going to get this from super cheap components.

The store I work at builds our own PCs using components from Asus, Toshiba, Intel, AMD, IBM, Nvidia, and Seagate. We never go for the cheapest product and we always watch for which companies will stand by their warranties and provide up to date driver support.

I've built and rebuilt/upgraded at least 20 computers for myself and maintain 7 computers in my home alone running various OSes and flavours of them. If you want a PC that will run any OS out there you need to build it yourself, because the big OEM builders won't check every item to make sure there's a Linux or *BSD driver available for it, not a chance.

Version 1008 was released on 22/02/2002. Version 1009 was released on 30/04/2002. The latest versions often appear first on the German FTP server.

Your "ATA/100" motherboard does not support 48-bit addresing.

Why cant someone put such a processor, 256Mb of ram, a silent slow disk, vga, nic and ethernet into a small box (no extreme design, just something slightly smaller than a minitower).

Got my laptop from Higrade, a UK based reseller of Asus boxes. Asus are well known for the mobos, but less so for their fully assembled products. Take a good look at the specs for the Higrade Notino 2200 (an Asus machine underneath). Basically, the spec is for a PC equivalent of an iBook, at a really competitive price.

I was curious if there were onboard video on the mother board or AGP or if he was going headless. So STFW for"Asus A7B266-D Motherboard Specs" and narrow further and further realising that "A7B266" is not out there. I head over to Asus's MB Section where I see that that model# seems to look correct but can't find a match. I'm assuming it has integrated n-force. Just thought it was a little odd to not be able to find this board, I'm sure if I searched harder I could find it at something like Pricewatch, but I wonder why it's not featured at Asus's site?

Basically, the NLX and to a lesser extent the FlexATX form factor are dead. Witness the lack of NLX and FlexATX Pentium4 and Athlon motherboards.

If you really wanted to though, you can still build an NLX system. Enlight makes a pretty good NLX case, and you can get a motherboard from Gigabyte, no AGP though. For an AGP motherboard you're probably looking at i810 or i815, these guys seems to have a couple. You could also try Ebay.

You'll also need an NLX-complaint AGP video card. These cards have the VGA connector at the top and a "notch" below, like the one in this picture. As far as I know they stopped making NLX video cards after the GeForce, so that's the best you'll be able to do.

Basically, there is no REALLY good reason to go for a NLX system anymore. If you don't care about performance, you can find plenty of FlexATX Socket-370 boards with onboard video/sound/LAN.

If you DO care about performance your best bet is to go with a MicroATX i845 board like this one. Pentium 4 is better for a small PC than Athlon because of the heat issues with the Athlon. You should be able to pair up this kind of board with any video card you want, like a Geforce3.

Having said that, I'd love to see one of these slightly taller

Try the ASUS Terminator then. 2 PCI slots, 2 3.5" bays, 2 5.25" bays. A bit more plasticky too though.

...so I bought this and that. Not as geeky as the shuttle thingie, not as fast as the bleeding edge, but a tad cheaper... Most important: Everything is supported under Linux, hehe.

I just built (mom's christmas toy) a box with one of these ASUS barebone systems. It's pretty small, very quiet and expandable (provided you are ok with no AGP slot). The CD-ROM drive (when spinning) is the loudest thing in the box.

Not sure about how well Linux supports the SIS 630ET chipset tho.

But, I'm gonna do it anyways. It's wrong; you really want to go to http://www.asus.com.tw/Products/Notebook/B1000/ind ex.html

The link in the article above is broken, here's the correct one:

http://www.asus.com.tw/Products/Notebook/B1000/ind ex.html

For some reason the link on /. doesn't work - after navigating through asus's site, here is the real page with the B1000 specs: http://www.asus.com.tw/Products/Notebook/B1000/ind ex.html

Darned /. effect anyway

ASUS B1000

I know that nvidia has the geforce2go mobile chip. Ati will probably come out with a new laptop chip as well. Those two are probably your best bet.

However, it does take a while to get a new video chip in a laptop because each individual model has to get certified (this is what nvidia told me). So, even though the nvidia chip is out now, it might still be another four months or so until you see it in action.

Now, if you have money, i would suggest this route - microatx. You can get some pretty sweet plastic cases that are very small, and decent motherboards from good manufacturers like Asus. Pair this up with a flatpanel and you'd have a trick gaming machine for sure.... if you're really into hacking you can mount the flatpanel in the side of the case, but you might need to get a slightly bigger case for that.

So, if you don't want to wait, go microatx. if you do, just keep your eyes open until a laptop with the gf2go comes out.

After a little bit of digging around, I found that VIA is planning to introduce a Socket A chipset which includes SMP support (but only two-way). This chipset will be called the Apollo Pro KX266, and their roadmap has a little schpeil about it. That takes care of the processor (AMD) the chipset (VIA) and I really hope that somebody makes a motherboard to work with this chipset. Also, VIA says that the motherboards which will be based on this should support FireWire - sweet! I'm betting on Asus, Biostar, or Abit to come out with a mobo for the KX266, they currently make mobos for VIA's KX133. I expect to see this!

Replying to my own message here, something I forgot:

Email ASUS and complain here (marketing), and here (tech support).

(I had those email addresses in my story submission to Slashdot as well... oh well.)

Info on this board is on this page

Athlon K7 OEM Solution
The ASUS K7M and K7M-RM is equipped with 200MHz FSB, 3x DIMM, UDMA/66, and optional Health Monitoring and 2 additional USB ports.

http://www.asus.com.tw/Produ cts/Motherboard/index.html

Interestingly, when you click on the K7M / K7M-RM the cpu connection button bar adds "Slot A" as an entry. ;)

I have been on an AMD/Asus buying spree lately. I got my g/f an Asus P5A motherboard for her K6-2 and have built a webserver with K6-2 & Asus P5A. These machines have done quite well in relatively different applications - the webserver has been going non-stop for 243 days (running FreeBSD 3.2-RELEASE), and my g/f's workstation doesn't have any hardware issues with its wealth of toys. Eg., Hauppauge WinTV 401, Buslogic Multimaster SCSI controlling a Plextor 40X Max CD-ROM (which utterly and completely rocks), and Yamaha 4416 SCSI CD-RW. For some reason the FIC PA-2013 the system had before was unhappy about having the Buslogic controller and IDE drives on the primary controller. Smooth sailing in all cases w/ the ASUS P5A, though.

Also, I'm currently in the specification stage for 2 rackmount Athlon servers. After dealing with vendors to get the Athlon machines set up, I can tell you - it is *not* easy to find higher-end configurations with Athlon. Fortunately, the good people at ASL, Inc. have been very helpful. In fact, they were the first vendor I saw meaningfully demonstrate Athlons (when I was lucky enough to attend Atlanta Linux Showcase last year). If you're looking to build an Athlon server, check them out. They're cool. Tell them ninjaz sent you. ;)

Yeah, ASUS has released a K7 mobo, albeit somewhat surrepetitously, called the K7M. Tom's hardware does a review of it and 5 other K7 mobos HERE.

They're selling these mobos in, get this, plain white boxes with nothing identifying ASUS as the manufacturer. There's also NO info on their website on the K7M. They're officially releasing the motherboard under a dummy company called, I think, "Freeway". Their site search turns up nothing on the K7M, but Tom's has a link to a hidden place on ASUS's site that has K7M info.

I don't know who they're trying to fool with these antics, but I'm not impressed by either ASUS or Intel's strong-arm tactics. In fact, I'm calling shenannigans on this whole deal. SHENANIGANS!

With the K7 out, and multiprocessor K7 motherboards due out in 2000, there won't be any reason to buy Intel ever again! Death to Intel! Death to Microsoft!

Lot's of motherboards out now. I got mine here, and they did a great job with everything. But anywhere you look, on the web, should have them.

Generally, the MicroStar, the Fester (from AMD), and the ASUS are considered pretty decent. Main problem with the ASUS is that it isn't supported very well (the American webpage has NOTHING on it about the K7M, only the Taiwan page has info on it). I have heard that the FIC board (SD-11) was just a prototype board that was pushed into production because AMD needed the boards.

As for finding the boards, I haven't had a problem.

I don't see Firewire dying either. Not when you have a motherboard manufacturer like ASUS making a P3B motherboard with Firewire inbuilt. Pity that they didn't give it the full set of 4 sdram slots though.