Choosing a Mother Board

Choosing a Mother Board -

There are many things to consider when selecting a Mother-Board. The CPU, type of RAM (and the amount) you intend on installing

in the system, number and type of slots (ISA, EISA, VLB, PCI) and their location in relation to the case you will be putting the Mother board in. Upgradability, Integration, Expandability, and Proprietary are some buzz words you should get a little familiar with.

Photo of Freetech's P5F79 - socket 7 motherboard... my personal favorite for the standard Pentium chips by Intel and AMD.

	Intel Triton VX chip set, 66MHz bus paths
	512K external cache memory,
	4 SIMMs, 3 DIMM,
	5 PCI (one shared), 3 ISA sockets, and
	Awards new Pentium BIOS.
	Drive Controllers are EIDE (supporting 4 EIDE devices),
	1 parallel SPP or ECP/EPP bi-directional printer port,
	2 16550 UART Serial (Com) ports (one can be defined as the new USB port), and
	a PS/2 adapter port.

I have about 6 of these working in my shop (including my email server), and another few dozen in customers systems... these are a bit more expensive than most, but have been problem free and very solid. Only down side, they won't run the AMD K6-233 or the newest 266 MHz chips.