PCBONEZ wrote:Hsing Tech has been doing "White Box" boards since the 90's for many dozens of smaller companies - not unusual.
Hsing Tech steal […]
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hyoenmadan wrote:
You have any proof that these models are just reused old designs?
And about the rest is just your personal opinion.
Hsing Tech has been doing "White Box" boards since the 90's for many dozens of smaller companies - not unusual.
Hsing Tech stealing designs is not unusual either.
A tiny company actually manufacturing their own boards - that's unusual big time.
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All you have to do is look at the Gigabyte board to see it's a stolen design.
The caps are even in the same positions.
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Only circumstantial weak deliberations. Hsing Tech produces white box boards for smaller companies, but you know that many respectable brands subcontract Hsing fabs to build their own designs. These brands can also license prebuilt blocks from Hsing Tech to use in their customized designs. And you still don't have a solid proof like the Schematics of these boards.
The same with the Gigabyte board... you don't know if Gigabyte licensed that VRM block from Hsing Tech to be used in its customized design, if Gigabyte sold/licensed their design IP to Hsing Tech so it can be used for other manufacturers under special contract clausules, etc, etc... You just are backing your statement with something trivial, like the Cap bank position in the board.
PCBONEZ wrote:The board in the OP is a socket 370 board, so no, P4/C2D boards are not the whole topic.
And as alexanrs pointed out several times - these IIT boards don't support ISA sound anyway.
Yes, there are second hand Socket 370 VIA boards with ISA slots out there ready for recap, maybe OP just doesn't know how to do/ want to do it. Troublesome task if you don't have the appropiate tools and skill.
Both VIA boards in that page have the 686B southbridge, which supports Native ISA with DMA for soundcards. The only question about them was if these boards actually support Tualatin CPU, which wouldn't be a problem as soon as the board has an not so outdated VRM chip.
alexanrs wrote:Nope, I'm just assuming they are not stupid enough to spend money on R&D for products that will sell on very small numbers for an affordable price when there are plenty of designs already out there.
I never said ANYTHING about ECS/Asrock/PCChips quality. I said I don't trust IIT, as they don't even seem to have a proper sales channel or a decent website. If they are cutting corners there, how can I be sure they also did not go for the cheapest passive components they could get away with, and the cheapest fabs possible, and the poorest QA in existence (if any). I did not say the build quality IS crap, just they have given me no reason to assume its not.
You don't need actually any R&D dept to make your own boards from zero, you just need license IP blocks, or complete designs if you want, so you can modify them for your needs and make a new board ready for production.
Is very reasonable that they don't have a proper designed/cute website. As you said they are actually producing small batches of boards for very specific applications, they don't have intentions to compete with the bigger brands or in the normal PC market. As sson as the customer knows the existence of these boards via that simple site, they can settle a deal personally in their offices, or via the AliExpress site. Probably not enough for you, but enough for customers who have expensive interface cards and equipment driven by these cards, and don't have any other way to get the replacement boards that they need.