October 2, 1999

If there is one particular situation nobody wants to be in, that would probably be to find yourself at the absolute top only to discover that Mount Everest is built on quicksand. Worse, the quicksand that was carefully manicured to a make-believe rock, is, all of a sudden neglected in favor of the ice princess. There are no particular reasons given, except for some shortages in supply. Meanwhile, the caretaker has gone to the dance at the other wedding but not without leaving some well meant advice of how to behave.

ASUS is facing a similar situation. Being the worlds biggest manufacturer of mainboards and the prime supplier of a multitude of OEMs, the current situation bears an almost comical resemblance to the old Buster Keaton slapsticks. No more BX chipsets means that the production will come to a standstill and not even an expansion into the graphics domain could possibly occupy the capacities threatened to run idle, should the nightmare come true. What a shame, particularly in view of the extremely high quality encountered time and again whenever dealing with ASUS products.

There is, of course the little word if, subject to numerous rhymes. In this case, what the two letters imply reads in plain business language:

If ....

You dare to take on the offer of this other company, then we will be really disappointed, to say the least. History is full of examples of what is appropriate and what isn’t and there have always been workarounds. Remember Harun al Rashid, the famous Caliph or the Chinese Emperor who went out in disguise to have a night on the town? In today’s business world, no disguise is good enough for ventures like that anymore, however, playing a little cloak and dagger with Chipzilla at least has the benefit of mutually saving face.

The recipe is as old as 1001 Nights, take another name that nobody has ever heard of and hit the streets. Even better, one could disguise as someone else and what could be more distracting than loaning the first initial from something as despicable as the iMac (just kidding) or the i740 (hehe). While there is still no official confirmation of the matter, it is clear that the so called iBoard that has been available for over a week now, is nothing but a cleverly disguised K7M manufactured by ASUS. We have taken this opportunity to take a look at the long overdue debut of ASUS in the realm of Athlon.

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