VIA EPIA M Mainboard

[stiltman]

VIA EPIA M Mainboard
Anyone messing around with this motherboard?

I was thinking about building a little PVR box for the livingroom and wanted to know if anyone has used this new motherboard...seems like it will do the trick. I was thinking about running Mandrake instead of Win2k/XP

comments?

[The village idiot]

I have an Epia M-9000 that I bought to go with an HDTV card. This board is no different from most of the other Via boards in that it has problems with PCI timing, and other such problems. If you use it with something like an external device you should be OK. Playback is good with the onboard mpeg chip, even takes the interlace off of DV files. But this same mpeg chip causes errors with some of the mpeg editors. I also have an audio problem which is most likely just an IRQ problem, but haven't bothered to sort it out yet. The newer M-10000 or the Epia V series might be better, but I doubt it. Too bad it has the typical Via chipset problems, these woulsd make a fine PVR device if they worked better. You might want to check out the FIC ITX boards and see if they are any better. You can find a list of vendors at http://www.mini-itx.com or if in the US try http://www.idot.com also look on Ebay for new boards, don't know as if I would buy a used one there.