Via EPIA

[Steve M. Gehlbach]

> 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