EPIA MS - First Look
Posted on November 26, 2004

Here's a quick look at VIA's EPIA MS motherboard, a low-profile CLE266 chipset Mini-ITX form-factor board due in early 2005 and aimed squarely at embedded systems manufacturers. Though we fully expect to see them featuring on our projects pages sooner rather than later...

The EPIA MS has just 3 back panel ports, but many onboard I/O connectors in the form of pin headers. The back panel ports are a 10/100 RJ-45 LAN port, VGA port and Compact Flash slot. As with all Mini-ITX boards there is a PCI slot on one side, and like the EPIA TC, there is one SODIMM memory socket on the reverse. Onboard I/O Connectors provided are: 2 x UDMA 66/100/133 IDE connectors, 3 x USB (for 6 USB 2.0 ports), Front Panel, CD audio-in, SMBus, VIP Port, FIR, CIR, WOL, optional LVDS, 2 x Serial, PS2 (mouse and keyboard), SPDIF, TV Connector, Front Panel Audio, Audio and 2 x Fan connectors.

Our MS came with an actively cooled 1.2Ghz C3 processor, but fanless 800Mhz and 1Ghz Eden processor versions are also promised - making them the fastest fanless EPIA boards available when they arrive.

The Compact Flash slot links to the on board VIA VT6207 USB2.0 Compact Flash card reader controller, and supports CF type I and type II. We connected a keyboard and mouse to the PS2 pin headers on the board in the penultimate picture. Then we got distracted and took started taking pictures of the heatink.