They were not cheap, but this sort of quality never is.

Naturally, it supported all the then-new features like SDRAM, ATA-33, and linear burst mode, and it came with a full 1MB of cache RAM - a very significant factor indeed. The PA-2007 was no exception: it was the first board to feature the VIA Apollo 590 VP-2 chipset. The fastest motherboard in the world for a long, long time, and it was still amongst the very best even in the twilight of its career.įIC and VIA have always had very close connections - they are both owned by the giant Formosa Plastics combine - and FIC have often taken advantage of this to be first out with new VIA-based products.

Cache: Surface mount, 512k pipeline burst.

RAM: 4 72-pin fast page or EDO up to 128MB, 64MB cacheable.

Some main board makers offered VX versions that supported 75MHz but the chipset was out of spec at that speed and, whether it was for that reason or some other, they rarely ran as reliably as the SiS and VIA based products. The only chip you couldn't run on one of these was the 6x86-200 Classic with its 75MHz bus speed requirement. The VX chipset was almost finished by the end of '96 but the PCP VX boards were quite cheap, simple to work with, and perfectly practical.īy this time it had become mere routine to offer excellent support for all the popular CPUs - the days when you had to pick and choose main boards to run a K5 or a Cyrix chip were long gone - and even the unusual 55MHz bus 6x86-133 just plugged in. PC Partner did not and still don't have a great reputation as a quality board maker, but although we only used perhaps thirty or forty of this model they gave us no trouble to remember.

Best With: Any IBM/Cyrix CPU, especially 686-200 Classic.Īn odd-bod for us but very representative of the mature VX board in general.

Cache: Surface mount, 512k pipeline burst standard, up to 1MB optional.

Like the PA-2002, it could operate with just a single 72-pin SIMM if required.

RAM: 4 72-pin FPM, EDO or BEDO, up to 256MB.

There was an earlier version too, which didn't have 75MHz support.

→ Like so many FIC products back then in their glory days, the PA-2005 was beautifully built quality you could see just by looking at the board. They went particularly well with Cyrix and IBM CPUs, especially the often difficult 6x86-200 Classic (which at the time, was the fastest thing money could buy). The Apollo 585 chipset was manufacturer-certified at 75MHz (almost unique in those days) and the PA-2005 was rock-solid at any speed. This was the definitive version, certified for 75MHz operation and solid as a rock.Ī long-term favourite of ours built around the excellent VIA Apollo 585 chipset, it was already quite old by the time things like the PA-2007 came out, but remained one of our best-sellers right up until FIC ceased production in the following year.

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