Monday, March 19, 2001

Additional features

Additional features of the AOpen AK73 Pro (A) motherboard include: Wake on LAN, Wake on Modem Ring, PS2 connectors for connecting mice & keyboards, 4 USB ports - two of which are located on the back panel, an integrated AC"97 sound-card, Power Lost Recovery, Suspend to RAM, Suspend to Disk, RX/TX connectors for infrared, and start-up from the mouse, keyboard, or at a pre-set time. Hardware monitoring of fan speed, CPU temperature, and of voltages is also included as a standard feature of this PC99-compliant motherboard. Finally, a diagnostic system is also included - both the Dr. LED, and Dr. Voice systems are supported.

Below, a photo of the AOpen AK73 Pro (A).

Installation

Installation of the AOpen AK73 Pro (A) is unfortunately not as simple as full jumperless mainboards are.

First of all, we must make sure to select the proper FSB range though JP21 before to start the hardware installation. Also, if an unlocked processor is used, the appropriate multiplier must be selected through SW1 because there's no fucntion available into the BIOS for this adjustment. Once these adjustments are done and that the CPU, HSF and memory modules were installed, you can place the board in a case, plug it in, and boot-up.

The software bundle

The installation CD includes the VIA 4-in-1 version 4.24 drivers, drivers for the sound-card, Adobe Acrobat Reader, a digital rendition of the user's manual, and Norton Antivirus 2000.

The hardware bundle

The AOpen AK73 Pro (A) comes with: one 80-pin ATA66/100 cable, a floppy-drive cable, and USB cable for the rear panel.

Next: Specifications.