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Freeway Design FWD-A7KA Motherboard Review

Author: Dennis Garcia

Published: Sunday, September 23, 2001

External Connectors

Unlike many of the other companies that are offering 5.1ch onboard audio Freeway is actually giving us easy access to it. As you can see the ATX block on the motherboard follows the standard layout as far as placement except for some notable differences.

The serial ports have been moved to an AT style connector that can be mounted in an open expansion slot. A Firewire port has been added, along with 4 audio plugs instead of the standard 3. Everything fits through a standard back plate except for the audio plugs, a quick mod with a Dremel will take care of that.

If you view the photos of this board from Freeway's website you will notice a box with some extra connectors on it. This is the multi-media bay that comes with bare-bones systems. Since I was only sent the motherboard for review I got the media cards but no bay to put them in. I do believe the bays can be purchased separately though I am not certain. Personally I am ok with this since I have plans to build a completely acrylic case for this board and then will mount these cards in plain view. In effect building my own media bay.