You are right, and these questions must be addressed before you buy. The on-board stuff can be disabled in the BIOS, thus allowing you to install your own alternative display adaptor or ethernet card, and the PCI slot can have an adapter installed that gives you two PCI slots.
All the hardware on the mobo is supported by Windows drivers from VIA, and on mine it all (mostly) works with drivers out of the box from the Debian 3.0r0 disk (with 2.4 kernel). At the end of the day the mobo is only NZ$205+GST, so depending on who you are and what your application was you could almost replace the whole thing if it broke. Andy > They're very cool - but they'd be an absolute pig if any part is not > supported by your OS. > > Theres only one PCI slot, and its probably a half-height (case > dependant) > > What if the video card dies? or the network card starts acting weird? > you can't swap and chop. Personally on-board video and network is my > biggest gripe. <snip>
