Sun StorageTek Fifth Slot Expansion Module

Advantages: Lots of expansion bays, varitity of them (isa,pci,apg)
Disadvantages: May be too compact for prossesors with large fans

...It is a ATX based motherboard, with lots of space for expansion though the three ISA based slots and though four PCI based slots. With a award bios I have personally found it easy to adjust the features to suit my needs. I have found just one small problem with the motherboard which is that the power connector is too close to the IDE connector making it difficult to connect an large IDE connector to the motherboard, for example the silver aerodynamic IDE bus cable I use to improve cooling. I feel that the slot 1 connector is well spaced out from large components which makes it easy to fit the processor, although the heatsink for the co-processor is a bit too big, but this is a problem that is easily solved by replacing it. Overall I was impressed by the preformance of the board and feel it is well designed, Gigabyte have done it again.... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful

Advantages: Easy of setup, 'Tweakability'
Disadvantages: Possibly unstable dependant on memory

...The Abit KA7-100 motherboard is one of the latest offerings from the Taiwan based company. Based around the Via KX133 Chipset, the board supports AMD's Athlon processot with it's slot A architechture. Unusually for a KX133 board, the KA7 has 4 DIMM slots allowing a maximum of 1Gb of system memory to be installed. All the other expected features are available - 5 PCI slots, a legacy ISA slot, and an AGP slot that, thanks to the KX133 chipset, supports 4xAGP. The board has 2 Ultra DMA 66 channels, but also sports 2 Ultra DMA 100 channels using an onboard Highpoint 370 controller chip. For the real performance seekers out there, the UDMA 100 channels can also be configured (using a second, preferably identical hard drive) as an IDE RAID array, which almost doubles the hard disk performance. Using Abit's SOFTMENU III, the board's bios... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Compact, expandable, affordable
Disadvantages: Wish it had 128MB program memory

..., and also the maps take longer to read than from a notebook installation. A 400MHz processor should do better than my P166 laptop of a few years back....... The CF slot gives you WLAN or other peripheral functions. Compare this to the more expensive Ipaq 5xxx series that loses the CF slot for built-in LAN. Fine, but what if I want Wireless-G instead of 802.11b? You're not stuck with the H2210. The loss of the standard Ipaq sleeve expansion is nil. Bluetooth fills that void because you can use Bluetooth for wireless keyboards, direct connection to Bluetooth-enabled phones, and Bluetooth GPS modules. I can virtually guarantee the peripheral makers will be rushing to Bluetooth now. You might lament the demise of your old GPS as I do (not an expansion port issue there but one of docking connector) but Bluetooth will free you of the cables... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average not helpful