no complaints at all. it's very simple and stable with an 1500xp at stock settings.

didn't give 10 because i'm not one to utilize all the features.

not yet sure about cmi 9738 chipset for sound though i dont use as i have an sb live. out of the box very simple and nothing special needed to get full compatability for this mobo.

was detected by Mdk install beautifully, the sis components worked well, except a small problem with the sound card (integrated) I had to go in to mandrake control center | harddrake and configure it to use the i810 driver instead of the automatically selected intel 8x0.
Have not yet connected anything to the onboard lan, but it seemed to detect it. Will try that (and update) when I get my cable access in the next coupla months.

Very stable with Mandrake 9.2 and Athlon Thunderbird 1200MHz (200MHz FSB).

Onboard sound sounds bad ("scratchy" noises) at anything other than low volumes. Other than that, all onboard devices work great with no problems.

Also works great with Knoppix 3.3.

UPDATE - my KVM was causing the problem... Didn't affect windows, so... I figure that something could be done better.

Doesn't work for me....

starting yast....
No keyboard detected. Trying to connect via serial interface /dev/ttyS0.
On your terminal computer start the user interface with
y2base "serial(115200):/dev/ttyS0 qt --fullscreen --noborder
or
y2base "serial(115200):/dev/ttyS1 qt --fullscreen --noborder
or start the YaST2 menu by typing "yast2" and select YaST2/Remote Install

I find this odd, since the keyboard actually works in this terminal window.

no problems. lm-sensors (temp/voltage data), sis900 (network), hd controller, etc. no problems. stable. running with an athlon xp 2200+ (thoroughbred)

This board came preinstalled in a computer I bought. I upgraded from a Duron 950 to an Athlon 2200+ with no problems. No BIOS update was needed, and Linux booted up with the new CPU no prob.

Onboard nic works fine (sis900), don't use the onboard sound so I can't speak for that. Bios setup is easy to use and well organized.

My only beef is that the user manual reads like a bad translation. I give it a 9 because it has caused me no problems.

The SiS chipsets are well supported in 2.4 and 2.6 kernels. I have had some trouble getting to know which modules to load, but eventually everything worked.

ACPI: working
ALSA: working (sis7012, snd_intel8x0)
lmsensors: working (kernel 2.6 only, it87, i2c_sis96x)
athcool: no sound; using the command line hack does work when leaving the pc running overnight, no further problems detected

#lspci:
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 735 Host (rev 01)
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] Virtual PCI-to-PCI bridge (AGP)
0000:00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS85C503/5513 (LPC Bridge)
0000:00:02.1 SMBus: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS]: Unknown device 0016
0000:00:02.2 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 07)
0000:00:02.3 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 07)
0000:00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE] (rev d0)
0000:00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] Sound Controller (rev a0)
0000:00:0d.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
0000:00:0f.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
0000:00:11.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 50)
0000:00:11.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 50)
0000:00:11.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 51)
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: 3Dfx Interactive, Inc. Voodoo 4 / Voodoo 5 (rev 01)

The only real issue I have ever had with this board was IRQ assignments in the BIOS, which wasn't a linux specific problem.

As for compatibility with linux, it has worked fine from day one, although I don't use the PCTel modem or lmsensors so I can't comment on them. The board is stable and the onboard sound, nic, usb, and ide controllers work fine with slackware.

9 because Linux install CDs fail to boot when APIC IO is enabled in bios (option only available in hacked overclocking Bios)

stable fast, supports mbmon and athloncool IO software. (temperature control and all drivers installed without prompting.


Athlon XP 1700+ @1650MHZ
ECS K7S5A
256meg DDR300
120gig Seagate 7200rpm 8MB cache
Skywell Brooktree TV Tuner
All 5 pci slots loaded
250watt PSU

mbmon output
case CPU Geforce2 MX200
30 42 256


The geforce temp sensor is faulty lol is adjusts on the fly between 25 - 372degrees Celcius :S

A really solid system for the price.

I had some issues with the sound, but found later on it was my distro cds...everything detected fine on boot and everything runs smoothly.

As for compatibility with linux, it has worked fine from day one on :
- Mandrake from 8.2 to 2005 LE (kernels 2.4 to 2.6.11)
- Knoppix 3.x

lmsensors are fine for CPU voltage, but show quite a bunch of messages complaining about voltage.
The board is stable enough for me to O/C the FSB up to 147/147 MHz (AMD1800+ @ 1687), while Windows 2000 sp4 won't boot @ more than 143/143MHz :) Onboard nic and ide controllers work fine, but i ruined my USB key (duno on linux or windows).

I run it with 1Geil 512MB DDR400 + 1Elixir 256MB DDR266 without any problems.

As said by carl0ski, Linux install CDs (Mandrake) fail to boot when APIC IO is enabled in bios (option only available in hacked overclocking Bios).

A very good price/performances MB

There were no problems that i have found. I have been using this board for over 1 yr and it works very good. No bad boots , it reconizes hard drives up to 250 gigs, plays back dvd with very good results (proper software and cpu needed :) ). All in all very good board for the price.