On 17 Mar 99, at 12:13, Mark Rode wrote:

> I have owned five Tyan boards ....all Tomcat's one through three...and I
> have had problems and glitches with every one of them. Tyan is a cutting
> edge company that is always improving and trying to get performance
> products to market as quickly as possible. Tyan has had problems with AMD
> CPUs in the past ...I am writing this post on my bench PC which runs my
> last Tomcat III  .... this board  has a problem with sound cards and it
> refuses to turn off the Com port .........and this board was a warranty
> replacement for another Tomcat that died.

  Hmmm...  I had some problems with the only Tyan boards I ever used, but
I've heard raves about some of their other models.  I agree that they
probably tend to push the "bleeding edge" just a bit.

> I would recommend that the first time around you get something very stable
> and reliable...for a Super Socket Seven board it is hard to beat a FIC
> VA-503 +. They are a very good bargain at around 70 dollars.......and a
> AMD K6 2 400 will cost you $150......, 503s offer a lot of features, a 1
> meg external cache and the cutting edge Apollo III chipset which makes
> them perfect for AMD CPUs.....the Apollo is made by AMD. I have one of
> these myself and it has been 100 per cent trouble free...it is one of the
> best boards...if not the best ... I have worked with.

  My main home machine currently is a VA-503+ with a K6-2/300 (and 256 MB
of RAM...), and I second this recommendation.  Both boards have 1MB of
cache and Apollo III chipset.  The review I provided a link to found
the FIC board slightly faster, but the Tyan board squeezes in both a
third DIMM slot *and* an extra ISA slot.  These might make the Tyan a
better choice for some people, although it doesn't sound like these are
critical features that Donna needs for her upgrade.
  I don't think I've seen the FIC board quite as low as $70, but definitely
below $90.  On balance, I second this recommendation.


David G

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