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What you get is in reality about ½ the size of a shoe box, just slightly larger than the actual system board and approximately 7 x 7 x 2 inches. Once opened, the little box reveals that it is stuffed to the gills with the necessary accessories, that is a floppy and one 80 wire UATA ribbon cable along with a USB 2.0 / IEEE1394 combo bracket and the I/O shield.

It is a small box, indeed.

Documentation is provided in form of a brief but adequate manual and the necessary drivers are found on the "Driver Utilities" CD that also contains VIA's Flitedeck utility bundle.

Layout

Square and practical is probably the best description of the Epia-M PCB with the CPU, North and South bridges in a straight line in parallel to the single DIMM slot. At the very edge of the PCB are the two IDE connectors, the floppy interface is in a somewhat awkward position almost in the center of the board but it doesn't really matter too much, even if the practical value of this interface in general is waning.

The companion chips for TV-out (VT1622/M), audio (VT1616), LAN (VT6103-Tahoe) and firewire (VT 6307S) along with the VT1211 multi I/O controller are all in the same area, not that there would be much of an alternative anyway. What is somewhat unusual is the presence of an external keyboard / mouse header, which however, makes sense if the Epia board is used in a remote setup. Along the same lines goes the I²C serial interface. The manual further describes an optional low voltage differential signaling (LVDS) module connector which, however, was not present on our sample board. Such a module could theoretically be used for fiber-optics.

    

Left: A combo back panel bracket featuring two USB 2.0 and two IEEE1394 firewire ports along with a floppy, one UATA cable and the I/O shield are the hardware bundle. Right: A real "in-house" product, all companion chips used on the EPIA-M are made by VIA, pretty cool. Click thumbnails for larger images.

All connectors are placed such that they can be easily reached. In general, the Epia board is jumper-free, there are, however, a few jumpers left. Most important (or maybe not) is the ClearCMOS jumper (there is hardly anything that could be set in the CMOS setup that would require clearing of the CMOS in order to enable POST of the system). Other jumpers are the standard bridges in the audio output path to either the back panel or else to an optional front panel module.

One of the jacks in the I/O connector block is a multipurpose RCA video or S/PDIF jack. Whichever functionality is sought needs to be set by another jumper that is somewhat buried between the parallel port and the I²C / second serial (Com2) port header. That particular jumper is a bit hard to reach with just the fingers but on the other hand, it is not a daily chore either to change it.

Overall, the layout is well thought-out and shows how much miniaturization is possible even using standard components. The VRM used on the Epia-M is built around the Intersil HIP6004ECB synchronous rectifier controller using two n-channel MOSFETs, in other words, it is a single phase design that is used here but it suffices for the low power demand of the processor and integrated peripherals.

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