i875P Mainboard From Biostar: The First Ever Desktop Mainboard With WLAN Capabilities

by Anton Shilov
05/22/2003 | 03:40 PM

Biostar Microtech Corporation announced its P4TCA mainboard based on Intel’s flagship i875P “Canterwood” chipset. The mainboard is definitely one of the most advanced devices of this kind in the whole world; its unique feature is built-in WLAN feature. Besides, the mainboard provides a card reader as well as a number of other advantages for end-users.

Please see the specifications of the P4TCA mainboard from Biostar below:

• Supports Socket 478 Pentium 4 / Celeron processors with 400/533/800MHz Quad Pumped Bus with up to 3.60GHz clock-speed and above;
• Can take advantage of the CPUs with the Hyper-Threading technology enabled;
• i875P chipset, including Canterwood MCH and ICH5R I/O controller;
• 4 DIMM slots for up to 4GB of PC2100, PC2700 or PC3200 DDR SDRAM memory. Dual-channel memory bus support: the memory modules should be identical and installed in pairs;
• 5 PCI slots, 1 AGP Pro 8x slot, 1 CNR slot;
• 2-channel Parallel ATA-33/66/100 integrated controller;
• 2-channel Parallel ATA-33/66/100/133 RAID from VIA (VT6410, RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1);
• ICH5R supports 2 Serial ATA-150 ports with RAID;
• Up to 8 USB 2.0 ports ;
• 2 FireWire (IEEE1394) ports (VIA VT6307 controller);
• 10/100/1000Mbit/s Ethernet adapter from Intel;
• WLAN controller + Biostar AirLink RF Module;
• 6-channel audio solution from CMedia;
• Lots of additional tuning functions, including overclocking capabilities and hardware monitoring features;
• Biostar’s proprietary technologies and features;
• Rich product bundle;
• ATX Form Factor.

Unfortunately, I will tell you nothing about the pricing of this mainboard. Probably it will cost a bit more than $200, it will not be an inexpensive solution. On the other hand, it will be less expensive than to get a quality mainboard and a WLAN module, so, still Biostar P4TCA is an interesting deal. No idea about availability, but as i875P is not really a new chipset, hence, the mainboard may become available very shortly.