Wednesday, August 23, 2000

Introduction

Not long ago, we received yet another of the all-in-one, micro-ATX form-factor motherboards that have become an increasingly common site in our lab; this time, it was the Shuttle ME21. Being based upon the Intel 815E chipset, and implementing the I/O chip better known as "ICH2" has provided the ME21 with support for IDE ATA100, PC133 memory, AGP 4X, as well as providing integrated sound & graphics. All that said of course, let's say we get down to examining the ME21, and determining what distinguishes it from the rest of the pack.

The features

The ME21 is expandable via its 3 PCI slots, single AGP port, and a CNR slot; no ISA slots to be found here gang! There are also 2 168-pin DIMM sockets available to support upto 512MB of PC100, or PC133 memory. By all appearances, this seems to be a board well-suited for a job at the electronic heart of an assembly line, or network appliance. Please note that the ME21 also happens to be 1 PCI slot richer than the competing DFI CS35-EC.

Configuration of the Shuttle ME21 is accomplished - for the most part - from within the BIOS, as there are few jumpers on the board itself that are related to the CPU. Among those that are related, there are jumpers J1, JP3, and JP5, which can be used to force the FSB to 66MHz, 100MHz, or 133MHz, or allow the frequency to be determined automatically. The rest of the setup is accomplished from within the BIOS menu labeled "Chipset Features Setup", where one may change the FSB frequency, the clock multiplier, and the memory timings. As for Overclocking this board, according to the specifications at least, FSB frequencies of 66/75/83/100/112/124/133, and 150MHz are possible. However, we couldn't actually find any BIOS function capable of changing the FSB's speed. Hopefully, this is simply a bug in the evaluation board that we received for testing, and one that will be rectified with a new BIOS.

There are no options available for the adjustment of the Vcore and/or Vio voltages.

Next: Additional features.