Most of the current Athlon boards use a pure AMD design, with the AMD 751 (Irongate) North Bridge and AMD 756 (Viper) South Bridge chipsets. The FIC SD11 deviates from this slightly by using an AMD 751 North Bridge /VIA VT82C686A Super South Bridge combo. The SD11 is actually the first AMD/VIA hybrid design (followed by the Asus K7M) and offers some advantages over the basic AMD chipsets. The first advantage is that the VT82C686A is actually supported under Win 98SE, and allows basic drivers to initially be loaded. It's also a more feature-rich chipset, supporting four USB ports (two through an external pin-out), AC97 audio and MC 97 modem (through AMR) functionality, along with temperature, voltage and fan-speed monitoring. This is in addition to its basic ATA-33/66, IO controller and ACPI power management duties. The VT82C686A is also the Super South Bridge portion of the KX133, giving us a peek at a portion of this hot new Athlon chipset. While FIC includes a XStore IDE busmaster driver, you can also download and use the newest VIA reference drivers directly from VIA Technologies.
The external ATX I/O panel is the strangest part of the SD11, and I've never seen one quite like it. Instead of starting with the two PS/2 ports, FIC has switched the panel so that the USB ports come first, followed by the PS/2 ports. The printer port is in the same place, but you'll only find one serial port present. If you're wondering why FIC chose this design, you've come to the wrong place, but at least they've included a custom I/O shield plate with the board. This works perfectly, as long as your case supports the "pop-out" shield panel of the ATX 2.01 specification.
There are also only two fan headers, one for the CPU and another for a case fan. The CPU fan header is well positioned and makes installing or upgrading CPUs an easy task. The case fan header is located on the back of the motherboard, near the I/O panel, and is designed for a back-panel cooling fan. Those looking to install a front mounted fan with the SD11 should make sure it uses a basic four-pin case power connector.
Inside the FIC SD11 box you'll find the User Manual, a floppy cable, one ATA-66 EIDE cable, one ATA-33 EIDE cable, a software driver and utilities CD, the custom I/O shield and the SD11 motherboard itself. The VIA, AMD and Microsoft drivers and patches are also included on the CD, as are utilities like XStore busmaster drivers, CPUID, a DMI Editor and Adobe Acrobat. FIC also includes a CD with full versions of Norton Ghost (disk duplication), Norton AntiVirus (virus scanner) and Virtual Drive (CD emulator).