Monday, November 15, 1999

The Features (suite)

Additional features included with the Tekram P6Pro-A+ motherboard, include: Wake on LAN, an SB-Link connector, Wake on Modem Ring, PS/2 keyboard and mouse connectors, USB connectors, RX/TX connectors for infrared, wake up from the keyboard or mouse, and Power Failure Recovery. Hardware monitoring of fan speed, CPU temperature, and environmental temperatures are also provided as standard features. This motherboard supports the PC99 standard.

Below, a photo of the P6Pro-A+ provides a good view of its components.

Installation

To configure the P6Pro-A+, the bus frequency must be set. From there the operating frequency of your processor is determined by positioning jumpers in order to set the clock multiplier. Supposing you're using a Pentium III at 450Mhz, you would normally opt for a bus frequency of 100Mhz, and then a multiplier of 4.5X. The jumper that serves to determine the clock multiplier is labeled JP5, and those which determine bus frequency are JP23 and JP21. Once your choice has been made, it remains only to install the board, and boot-up. To Overclock, make use of the "Chipset Features Setup" BIOS submenu.

The Software Bundle

The installation CD includes the VIA Apollo Pro133 drivers, the PC-cillin anti-virus program, the Highpoint Xstore bus master drivers, the Hardware Doctor hardware monitoring software, and the Adobe Acrobat reader for reading PDF files.

Comments

The users manual gives an incomplete description of the assignment of the accessories' connectors. It was impossible for me to connect the green LED to its destination, because the instructions were lacking. What's more, to my surprise, this board possesses no jumper to reset the BIOS. To set the BIOS to its default values requires removal of the battery, and the short-circuiting of the three bottom pins of integrated circuit U19. I find this method a bit questionable. If in fact the board refuses to boot as a result of a bad BIOS setting, it would require cracking open the computer, and performing this rather unpleasant procedure...

Suite: The Test Results

Featuring VIA's latest Apollo Pro 133 chipset, this mainboard supports the new PC133 Specification for Intel Pentium III "B" & "EB" 133Mhz FSB CPUs up to 733Mhz, offering the maximum performance for the most demanding games and 3D applications. Hardware Monitoring keeps track of CPU Temperature and Fan Speed. Supports Keyboard Power-On with Windows 98 or normal (using hotkey) keyboards. The new Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP), which offers a theoretical peak transfer rate to 528MB/s by using "X2 Mode". The ATX form factor allows for more efficient system assembly with built-in mouse, serial and parallel port connectors.

Technical Specifications:

Processor: Supports 133Mhz FSB CPUs such as PIII E & EB SLOT 1 architecture supports Intel¨ Pentium¨ III & Pentium¨ II (up to 733Mhz) Intel¨ Celeron¨ Processors (up to 500Mhz) supported CPU Speed Switching Voltage Regulator: 1.3V~3.5V Chipset: VIA¨ Apollo Pro 133 PCIset 66Mhz, 100Mhz, 133Mhz speeds supported Advanced Hardware Monitoring with the Winbond W83783S chip BIOS: Flash EPROM Award¨ PCI BIOS On-board Symbios¨ SCSI BIOS On screen "Plug-and-Play" Setup Cache Memory: Built-in to Pentium¨ III / Pentium¨ II processor module System Memory: (3) 168-pin DIMM Sockets Maximum 768MB RAM 3.3V SDRAM DIMMs supported: PC133, Non-Buffered, SPD EEPROM On-Board EIDE: (2) UltraDMA/66 PCI Bus Master IDE Channels LBA Mode, Enhanced PIO Mode, 4HD Autodetect On-Board Super I/O: (1) Floppy Controller (up to 2.88 MB) (2) Serial Ports (16550 UART) (1) Parallel Port (EPP/ECP) (2) USB Ports Expansion Slots: (1) AGP Slot (5) 32-bit PCI Bus Master Slots (2) 16-bit ISA Slots Options: IrDA Infrared External Kit Smart Fan for CPU Temp Monitoring Dimensions: ATX Form Factor: 305mm x 170mm (12.0" x 6.7") System Requirements: ATX Case & Power Supply