Friday, September 15, 2000

Additional features

Additional features of the ECS K7VZM include: Wake on LAN, Wake on Modem Ring, PS2 connectors for mice & keyboards, 2 USB ports located on the back panel, 2 USB ports located on the board itself, Power Failure Recovery, Suspend to RAM, RX/TX connectors for infrared communication, and start-up from the keyboard/mouse, or at a pre-set time. Hardware monitoring of fan speed, CPU temperature, and of voltages is also provided as standard equipment on this PC99-compliant motherboard. An integrated AC"97 sound-card is also provided as part of the VIA 686A Southbridge. Finally, a Realtek 8139C network controller is provided as an integrated feature of the K7VZM, though at the time of this writing, we cannot say whether this is in fact standard equipment, or provided only as an option.

Below, a photo of the ECS K7VZM.

Click here to enlarge picture

Installation

Installation of the K7VZM passes without incident, particularly due to the absence of configuration jumpers. Installation essentially consists of placing the board in a casing, plugging everything in, verifying the accessory jumpers, booting-up, and making a quick pass through the BIOS to finalize any adjustments.

The software bundle

The installation CD includes the Via 4-in-1 driver pack (v4.23), and drivers for the integrated AC"97 sound-card. Several utilities also accompany the K7VZM, including PC Cillin, Garnut, and Super-Voice.

The hardware bundle

The ECS K7VZM is also escorted by a hardware pack that consists of an 80-pin ATA66 cable, a floppy-drive cable, and a network connector for the rear of the casing used.

Next: The Tests

K7VZM is installed with the VT8363 (NB)/ VT82C686A (SB) chipset and built-in 3D sound that features the AC 97 audio codec. It is a microATX mainboard that uses a 4-layer printed circuit board and measures 244 mm x 220 mm. The mainboard has a Socket 462 to accommodate AMD® Athlon (K7) processors that support 64/256 KB L2 OnChip cache, and 100/200 MHz host bus/core speed. It is also designed to support the future 1.5GHz Thunderbird processor. The mainboard delivers high-level performance with a 4X AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) slot and two PCI Bus Master Ultra DMA (UDMA) ports that support up to four ATAPI (AT Attachment Packet Interface) devices. The PCI IDE also supports PIO Mode 3 and 4, UDMA33/66 IDE, and an ATAPI CD-ROM.

PROCESSORS

462 pin Socket A supports AMD® Athlon (K7) processors Full series of Athlon processors including the newest Duron and Thunderbird processors. (Can support the future 1.5GHz Thunderbird)

CHIPSET

VIA® VT8363 (NB) & VT82C686A (SB) support AGP 2.0 specification (4X) Super I/O - Integrated in VT82C686A (SB) System Hardware Monitor: Integrated in VT82C686A (SB) LAN: RealTek 8139C AC97 Audio Codec: Avance ALC100(RealTek) Compliant with AC97 2.1 specification

MEMORY

Two 168-pin DIMM sockets for 3.3V SDRAM (Ready for PC100, PC133) Maximum: 1.0GB

SYSTEM BIOS

Award BIOS with 4MB Flash ROM in Firmwave Hub (FWH) Supports Plug and Play 1.0a, AMP 1.2, Multi Boot, DMI Full Support for ACPI revision 1.0A specification

I/O INTERFACE

Supports Plug and Play function PS/2 keyboard and PS/2 mouse connectors Four USB Ports (Two USB Connectors as header onboard) One - EPP/ECP mode parallel port Two - 16550 high-speed serial I/O ports Audio Ports (Line-in, Line-out, Mic-in, CD-in and game port) Dual PCI IDE interfaces - support four IDE devices (PIO mode 4, DMA Mode 2, Ultra DMA 33/66) Supports 360K~2.88M Byte, 3 Mode FDDs or LS120 LAN Header ATX Power Supply Connector ports, Headers and Others: IrDA header Extra IR/KB/Mouse header Extra MIC/Line-out header Green, HDD, Power indicator LED headers CPU and Case Fan headers Modem Ring Wake-Up header

RTC & BATTERY

VT82C686A included 256 bytes of CMOS SRAM With CMOS SRAM hardware clear jumper

EXPANSION SLOTS

2 PCI slots, 1 AGP slot, 1 AMR slot

FORM FACTOR

microATX (244mm*220mm)