Thursday, July 20, 2000

Introduction

The DFI TA64-B motherboard is one of the new breed of versatile logic boards. Not only is it gifted with the ability to support Slot 1 processors, but also Socket 370 CPUs as diverse as the PPGA family of Celerons, FC-PGA Pentium IIs, and even Via Cyrix processors. A wide range of choices are thus offered in terms of the CPU supported on this board. Based as it is on the Via Apollo Pro133A chipset, the board even supports technologies such as PC133 memory on an independent asynchronous memory bus, as well as AGP 2X/4X, and ATA66 disks of course. Well then, all said, let's take a look at the TA64-B, and see what it's made of.

The Features

For expansion purposes, the TA64-B sports 5 PCI slots, 1 ISA slot, and an AGP port; sorry, no AMR slot. There are also 3 168-pin DIMM sockets which can support upto 768MB of PC100, PC133, and/or ECC memory.

Configuration of the TA64-B is accomplished partially within the BIOS, and partially by the setting of certain jumpers on the board itself. First off, it's crucial to assure that jumper JP21 is set to recognize the right processor connector. Next, JP18 - which isn't documented in the manual - must be set to distinguish between Cyrix, and Intel processors. By setting pins 1 & 2 together, the system will recognize Via Cyrix processors. Setting pins 2 & 3 together will set the system to recognize Intel CPUs. Next, it may be necessary to set the block of DIP switches labeled SW2 (strangely, there doesn't seem to be a SW1...) in order to select a clock multiplier if you're the lucky owner of an unlocked CPU. Of course, most Intel processors will simply ignore this setting anyways, so in such cases, simply ignore this step. It is also possible to leave jumpers JP1, and JP2 in their default positions, which will allow the FSB's frequency to be determined automatically. Alternatively, these jumpers can be used to force the FSB to run at 100MHz, or even 133MHz. To adjust the operating frequency of the processor, one has to jump into the BIOS menu labeled "Frequency/Voltage Control". From their, a range of frequencies from 66MHz to 133MHz will be available. Among the available frequencies are 66Mhz, 75Mhz, 83Mhz,100Mhz, 103Mhz, 105Mhz, 110Mhz, 112Mhz, 115Mhz, 120Mhz, 124Mhz, and 133Mhz.

Another option within the BIOS also allows the operating frequency of the memory bus to be set to a value 33MHz higher or lower than that of the Front-Side Bus.

Unfortunately, no option is provided for altering the processor's Vcore voltage.

Next: Additional features.