On Sun, 15 Sep 2002, Steve M. Gehlbach wrote:
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.
I think the chipset is older. Possibly the 686 + realtek was cheaper than the 8231.
ron