Introduction

Ever since VIA announced their EPIA line of motherboards, we here at WhiningDog had been hoping to get our hands on one to tinker around with. In many ways the EPIA line of motherboards bucked the normal PC trend of building bigger faster systems. Here was a line of motherboards that were small (actually, very small!) and just fast enough to do certain tasks fairly well. On top of this, the new small boards inspired a round of creativity amongst DIYers who designed and built innovative case designs ranging from small Beatle cars to toaster oven PCs (check out www.mini-itx.com for more cool projects). VIA followed up the original EPIA board with the new EPIA M board at the end of 2002 that was targeted for digital media applications. So what exactly is behind this new craze? After a little prodding, VIA was gracious enough to send us an evaluation EPIA M-9000 a few weeks back. This board was amazing to look at – not so much because of its capabilities (and it does have a good amount of that) but more for how much is packed into a tiny real estate space. Let’s find out if VIA produced a board that could meet the needs of a digital media system.

Packaging

As with all of our reviews, let's take a look at the overall packaging that the EPIA M comes in. It's somewhat hard to tell the diminutive size of the motherboard with these pictures.

Top of the Box	Back of the Box
Inside	All the parts

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