VIA Apollo Pro 133A with Dual Processors

Microstar was actually the first to get us their dual Socket-370 board based on the VIA Apollo Pro 133A chipset, the 694D Pro.  The board itself is very well-designed, it features 5 PCI slots, 1 AGP slot and 1 CNR slot that can only accept Audio/Modem cards (the 686A South Bridge does not have an integrated networking controller). 

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In addition to the usual slot layout and its 4 DIMMs, it also features an on-board Promise ATA 100 controller with IDE RAID support. 

As if that weren’t enough, the board also features an optional Texas Instruments IEEE 1394 (a.k.a. Firewire controller) as well. The only problem with this implementation, as you can see below, is that it is a two chip solution which increases the cost of the motherboard by a noticeable amount.

Most motherboard manufacturers are waiting for a single chip solution before integrating Firewire on their boards.

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