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Shuttle Spacewalker HOT-663 Slot 1 Motherboard Reviewed by Vijay Anand (28/3/99)
<Introduction><The Good><The Bad><Conclusion><Rating> IntroductionEver wondered where someone sells Shuttle motherboards locally?
Well, after reading many on-line reviews about them... I'm in the same group! A good
reason why Shuttle is a rarity here could be because it's former partner IPC, is really
'down' these days compared to a few years back when IPC held roadshows and many other
advertising schemes. Also, Shuttle is concentrating it's efforts in some other countries,
not particularly in this region. This Shuttle board was flown in from Taiwan (their
headquarters) and whether it'll sell in Singapore or not is questionable, but for now,
we'll evaluate this board. Notice the title? With a name like "Shuttle
Spacewalker", you would think that you're getting cutting-edge technology on-board!
Whether you notice the name or not, their box design will make you notice it! (very
unfortunately that my Dad's DV-camera is not available for me take a snap). We'll see if
the board lives up to it's name. The GoodThe board comes in an older 4/3/1(PCI/ISA/AGP) expansion slot configuration but Shuttle has thoughtfully put 4-DIMMS to accommodate up to 1Gb of ram. Now, how many boards that you know come in a 4/3/1 config and equipped with 4 DIMMS? The best part is the location of HDD, FDD, ATX P/S and the 4 DIMM slots are placed right up-front. This confirms with th ATX spec 2.0 and the real benefit comes from the ease of installation and improved ventilation. The various LED & all other connectors are clearly labeled and located to the right of the board. This would be better if placed in front. The board includes a green-coloured heatsink over the 440BX chipset. This helps to get rid of heat from the BX chipset better while running at higher speeds & is even better if one is overclocking the board (that is if you can!). Cooling is plenty, more than other boards I've seen to date! There are FOUR 3-pin power connectors for CPU, Chassis, AGP fan installation & miscellaneous. Not bad for a board that has trouble overclocking! Should you need the SB-link connector for some PCI sound-cards, you'll be excited(that is if you have pure-DOS games like Crusader) to know that one is provided, although the Creative PCI sound-cards(which the SB-link was 1st intended for usage) are engineered in a different way that you don't require this connector to get full DOS sound support. Other cards like the wonderful Yamaha Waveforce 192XG uses this connector for pure DOS support too. For setting the FSB speed & the multiplier control, you have
the choice of the old fashioned jumpers or the menu in the BIOS. Seems odd at first but it
came in handy. The case was when I was using the the Bios controlled settings for the FSB
and CPU-Speed, then I selected an FSB too high, then the PC hung. I used the jumper-based
setup to start the CPU at it's default speed and it worked! So this gave me 100%
confirmation that I clocked the chip too high. I shorted the CMOS-clear pins and I was
ready to use the BIOS to configure my FSB and CPU speed easily again. There is a large
fixed jumper block (4x2) that controls the use of a jumper-based or BIOS controlled
cpu-setup. For manual CPU setup, there are printed tables to refer on the motherboard
itself. The beautiful Shuttle CD comes with these software for the
motherboard: System Manager, Adobe Acrobat Reader 2.1 for the complete manual. Here are a
few snaps I've taken for the install screen and the System-Manager(SM) utility:
The System manager is quite a nifty program! Not only does it monitor your CPU temp but it also helps to monitor your HDD-disk space, Virtual Memory space, set alerts for all, give detailed info on all your expansion slots and ram. These screen-shots were take when running the HOT-681 socket-370 motherboard, therefore the info/values on the Splash-Screen image and the Ram-info image are not reflecting this Slot-1 board. Speaking of monitoring, the CPU temp sensor well touches the heatsink of the CPU, so you can get quite an accurate read-out. Shuttle motherboard come with an installation/features fold-out only. The 'Complete' Manual is on the CD! And I must say that information and diagrams are well detailed on the manual found in the CD. Not to forget is that this board has an on-board Yamaha XG YMF724F-V chipset. If some of you are thinking of a quick and easy way of getting sound while changing to this board and pairing it with an el-cheapo pair of speakers.. forget it! You'll need amplified self-powered speakers as all of these on-board sound-chipsets don't have any amplification circuits, only pure line-out for the audio signal. Sound was very decent when hooked up with my Altec Lansing ACS400 speakers but I found that I had to set the volume quite high to hear sounds well, even the volume slider is high in windows. So don't expect any room filling sound.. just something to satisfy general users who sit in front of the PC. Depending on what games or music your listening to, the 3D sound in the volume properties can give you a nice effect.
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