Tekram S3815-ANE
Board Revision: 1.01
BIOS Version: 1.0 (July 14, 2000)
The Tekram motherbord is equipped with 6 PCI slots, three DIMM sockets, UltraATA/100, CNR slot and AC97 sound system. Unfortunately, you will only get one single line-in. Three DIMM sockets are. As with many other boards, the lower DIMM locks will block the AGP card space if they are open. The practical tests were quite successful, as all memory except the HSDRAM worked fine. I could use each of my three CPU coolers, even though it was a bit difficult to attach the biggest of them.
A COM2 connector is available as well as two more USB ports. To make use of both, you will need two adapter cables that were not included.
The FSB speed range has to be chosen via two jumpers. As with several other boards, you can chose freely between 66/100/133 MHz or auto-detect. Afterwards, you may set faster speeds within the BIOS. The S3815-ANE could easily have become an overclocking board, but Tekram did not implement an option to raise the core voltage.
This board comes with on-board 10/100 Mbit LAN, making a network card obsolete. I just could not find any way to disable it. There are several jumpers on the motherboard, but no one would allow you to switch the network functions off. Also the BIOS does not include any item to do so.
Tekram ships the board with a CD, including anti-virus software and all required drivers. The manual gives you all important informations, including system setup and BIOS item descriptions. Tekram, also known as specialist for SCSI controllers, added a SYMBIOS SCSI BIOS to this motherboard as well.
Last but not least, the board performed as good as the competitors and ran stable as well.
