15 Sep
2002
15 Sep
'02
12:33 p.m.
A very long time ago it did work. But then the 82c686 came along and we moved to that.
I thought that was the case. The 82c686 has the appearance of "improved" code from the 8231. Yet the 8231 seems to be a more inclusive chipset (ie, includes the network) than the 82c686 so I thought this was odd. Usually chips evolve to more functionality, not less. Of course, I am partly guessing, since I can't seem to find even a marketing thumbnail of the 8231 features on the Via web site. Via suffers from marketing name diarrhea for chipset collections, in my view.
It's interesting that in the Walmart $199 computer, Gigabyte uses the 82c686 and a Realtek lan chip instead of the 8231.
-Steve