Pleasant surprise - ECS L4S8A2

[herosrest]

I've had some kit lying about for a while and made an effort to get it off the ground today.

The article here pretty much covers my experience so far http://www.ripnet-uk.com/reviews/motherboards/ECS/L4S8A2/page2.shtml

As usual and forever XP was an utter pig to get setup.
With that pain was over I'm very pleasantly surprised.
Initial benchmarks with Celeron 2.0Ghz look promising.

[Peter M]

Good article. btw, the Realtek 8801 and 8201 are just PHYsical interface chips for 1394 and LAN, with the respective engines residing in the chipset itself (just like the C-Media 9738 is just a codec to the chipset's sound engine). That's why your LAN unit reports as an SiS 900 - this is the actual MAC unit; the Realtek chip just does the physical interface.

[herosrest]

I'm going to put in some hours for the next couple of days and get to know the board then swap in a more modern HD, another stick of ram and try a 2.4 P4 and a 512mb cf card adapter and see where it goes.
Sweet mobo.
I may have found a new workhorse.