john smith wrote:
> Does anyone out there know anything about the Intel D815EEAAL board
> that is on "special" at Fry's this week (at $299 with an 800Mhz
> Pentium III)?  And does it work well with NetBSD or should I get
> something else?

I'm very satisfied with MSI-694D Pro dual processor VIA-based motherboard:

* FC-PGA based (newer Celerons, PIII Coppermine+), supports processors
  up to 933 MHz; beware than PIII Celeron don't run in dual-processor
  mode any more, you need to get "real" PIII for SMP;
  Celeron works just ok if you run with just one, though (was running that way
  like 2 months before I switched to PIII)
* supports 66/100/133 FSB; board supports overclocking (settable in BIOS)
  up to 200 MHz; with my PIII 600 MHz for 133 MHZ FSB, I'm able to run
  FSB @ 147MHz, higher clock won't work for me
* 4 memory banks (DIMM 66/100/133 Mhz), up to 2 GB memory 
* builtin Promise Ultra100/ATA, common IDE supports Ultra/66 / Ultra/33
* 5 PCI slots, though one unusable if you are going to use the CNR slot
* one AGP 4x slot
* builtin auvia (though mine has the codec without hw sample rate converter)
* up to 4 USB ports (two usable with included cable,
  the other two are on the other side of board and would need special
  cable)
* the 'Pro' variant includes Texas Instruments TSB12LV26 OHCI IEEE 1394 Host
  Controller; the price difference between common and 'Pro' was like
  $US 25
* two serial ports
* there is an IrDa on board, though no cable is included 

Some people say there is a problem with USB on VIA-based boards.  I can't
confirm or deny this, I've not used USB on this machine yet.  The board
cost me about $200 in August when the board fas fairly new on CZ
market; the price at Fry's (or in US generally) should be (much) lower.
Overall, it's a nice board, IMHO.

Jaromir
-- 
Jaromir Dolecek <jdolecek@NetBSD.org>      http://www.ics.muni.cz/~dolecek/
@@@@  Wanna a real operating system ? Go and get NetBSD, damn!  @@@@