What do you think about.....

[C.C.]

Just curious, but what do you all think about Alton motherboards. Specifically the m599lmr. It's got onboard 32 bit pci sound and 8 meg agp video. It also comes with a built in modem and network card. It's got 2pci, 1 isa, and 3 dimm slots. And it does surport ata/66. Are they very stable? How about reliability? Pricewatch has them listed with an amd k6-2 300 for $119. Seems like a good deal. What do you think? Thanks. C.C.

[Peter M]

Hi!

Those LMR type boards are about the best value you can get for a cheap workhorse system. Everything except the modem is PCI busmaster hardware (the modem is CPU driven PCI). The graphics are great in 2D (up to 1600x1200 flicker-free) and have basic 3D acceleration (low-res gaming only, please). I have now used M598 and M571LMR boards in various operating systems, and didn't have any board related problems. (The M599 is the mATX sibling of the M598LMR.)

By any means use them with a processor that has 100 MHz bus, or else the shared-memory graphics unit will slow things down more than you will consider fun.

Currently the LMR boards seem to come bundled with Corel's Office Suite and Gamut audio software (including MP3 encoder), at least the M571LMR I had on my desk yesterday did. There even is an optional digital sound I/O bracket with normal and optical connectors.

Regards, Peter