Leadman FIC VA-503+ Motherboard

Pros: runs K6-2 to 550-K6-3 500-Pentium to 233-great for over-clocking
Cons: only 3 PCI-2 isa-does have agp x2 only

WHY FIC
In August of 1999, my computer room got up to 120+degrees-since all my computers(current one)run24/7, it got a little overheated and burned up both the cpu and motherboard.
I went looking for a motherboard/cpu combination I could...

Pros: Supports 72 pin SIMMs or 168 pin DIMMs, wide range of multiplier and bus speed settings, and useable with at least a few of those old ISA cards.
Cons: Jumpers placed *very* inconveniently. If you're going to use a small-to-midsized AT case, the DIMM banks will be hard to access. Oh, and the jumpers for bus speed and clock multiplier will be almost impossible to change.

All righty, so it's time to build a new computer. Perhaps you own a few ISA cards and some 72 pin SIMMs, and you don't really want to invest in DIMMs just yet. But you also want a motherboard that will let you use one of the faster Socket 7...

Pros: Stable as a rock, supports any Super7 CPU and is a great overclocker.
Cons: Could be a challenge for a computer "newbie"; it's complicated.

Super7 is a little long in the tooth now, but if you need a board for a K6-x processor or something to breathe some new life into an old AT-case system, this is your answer. And there's a bonus to it, as well--FIC does a terrific job of supporting this ...

Pros: None noted
Cons: Slow, touchy, and botched.

This board is probably one of the WORST ones on the market. I had one for a while and all it gave me were headaches. Keep in mind that all the while I was keeping my BIOS and drivers up to date (I had no choice...something had to improve, so I...

Pros: 1Mb cache, good brand, very stable, great chipset, wide support of CPU's, loads of expansion slots
Cons: won't take my Cyrix 433 :(

Here we have a belting motherboard. It was always my ambition to get rid of my poor PCChips motherboard and buy one of these boards because I had heard so many good reports about it and I had always trusted in FIC products in the past. However when it...

Pros: The pro would be it wasn't mine!
Cons: design, performance or lack there of, layout stability and requiring flashing for functionality

I had the Disdain once of owning one of these boards ... I have sence swore off FIC as a reliable company...basically cause the VA 503+ Fried My AMD K6 II 300 a couple of years back ... but a friend of mine had another friend build him a computer...

Pros: Cheap Upgrade path Reuse all kinds of old parts
Cons: Not very stable Poor driver support

Ok, it's both AT and ATX, it works with both EDO 72pin DIMMs and brand new PC100/PC133 168pin DIMMs, it has AGP, it has UDMA33, it has USB, it has plenty of slots.

Sounds like the ideal upgrade path, right?

You can swap motherboards...

Pros: Cheap or free. Overclockability potential. Runs any socket 7 cpu.
Cons: Not very stable. Compatability issues. ISA problems. Slower than some other MVP3 boards.

The board was free to me and came with a K6-II 400 cpu. I threw it aside as a spare to be used later. I purchased a 500 MHz cpu with the plan of building a set to use in my front room for Internet, e-mail, music and video/dvd playback and music ...

Pros: Plenty of Room to Expand, AGP 2X, Socket 7
Cons: Too bad Socket 7 is going by the wayside to PIII and Athlon

I bought this board a few months back hoping to move from a board with onboard sound and graphics to a board where I could put my own sound and graphics on. I got even more than that. This board has been ABSOLUTELY the most reliable motherboard I have...

Pros: quality
Cons: cost

I have had a quite a few units come across my bench for repairs. I have not seen to many FIC boards in those units even though the boards are sold locally by many places. When customers came to me and wanted to upgrade their machine and wanted my...

Pros: Cheap!
Cons: Documentation, layout.

Initially, this motherboard seemed quite appealing. It has 3 ISA slots for legacy cards (and I have TONS of old 3com 10mbit 3c509's lying around), and even SIMMS slots for the older RAM.
However, this board is utter garbage. The layout is...

Pros: SS7 never seemed so good. Great OverClocker! 512mb RAM supported.
Cons: No MB monitoring (that i know of). Video card support (lotsa tweaking).

This board was a gift to my fiance for her birthday.
The setup is quite difficult for someone that knows very little or nothing at all about hardware and setup.
The major issue I have found is PCI latency with a high-speed video card on AGP 2x....

Pros: Nice inexpensive board,good for internet usage,will handle loads of pc100 memory.
Cons: can be a tricky board to setup,memory slots hard to reach in AT cases.

FIC-503+ in my "epinion" would be a good starter board for someone building their first computer as long as they have a little patience and experienced help to call on when needed.I do advise that you install your memory BEFORE installing your board...

Pros: Very adaptable to whatever hardware you might have laying around.
Cons: The board is essentially obsolete. You can find cheaper and more modern alternatives.

This board was designed to ease the transition from older components so it has an AGP graphics slot, PCI slots and ISA for those older cards. It also has SIMM slots for that old 72 pin memory or one can use DIMMs. By today's standards it's over the hill but I recently dusted off my old board with the 500MHZ AMD II which never really ran Windows 98 that well. I think it didn't like the 133 MHZ speed 256MB DIMM or perhaps it didn't like the 32MB AGP grahics card. Look at FICS FAQ sheet and they practically say to only use up to 100MHZ DIMMs and a maximum of 16 MB of memory for the AGP card. But, when I recently loaded Red Hat Linux 9 on this baby it really started to shine as a potent performer. It is as if this configuration was designed for rock solid, stable Red Hat Linux 9! Red Hat is a world class contender and this board runs it smooth and clean. A real winner.