-=> CHARLES ANGELICH wrote to WAYNE CHIRNSIDE <=-

 CA> My knowledge of electronics leaves a bit to be desired but I
 CA> have the impression that the engineers who earn a very good
 CA> living designing this stuff haven't 'accidently' given anything
 CA> away for free? In short, we get what we pay for or, in some
 CA> cases, a bit less than we pay for but never more than we pay
 CA> for.

 CA> To have what a tech would consider a worthwhile motherboard to
 CA> put time/money into that tech is going to need server-class
 CA> hardware and even some of those are putting vid/sound/hd-cntrl
 CA> onto the motherboards. Slots seem to only be there for network
 CA> cards now. :-\

How many slots does one need, systems I've seen have 5 plus an AGP
for video! In addition they have optical audio ports, serial 
ATA, ect.
The bare bones systems, about 400 U.S. of which I speak have a video 
slot in addition to the onboard one and provision to disable the 
onboard one in CMOS.
Also Tom's hardeware site and www.motherboards.org
reviews speak of disabling onboard sound and video for superior
cards, this is done in the CMOS.
IIRC THIS H.P. allows one to disable the onboard video in the CMOS 
and the sound is a PCI card.
I've only got one spare slot here though if I used the card for DSL
I could free up the modem slot for 2 PCI.
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