Tyan S2054 Tomcat i810 microATX

As in just about every recent Tyan board, AMI BIOS is at the heart of the Tomcat i810's setup, but this time it's not AMI WinBIOS that Award BIOS users have come to hate. Instead, it's AMI's text-based Easy Setup Utility that looks similar to the Phoenix BIOS's found in many off the shelf systems. It retains the huge number of options that have always been available in the AMI BIOS and they're still somewhat cryptically labeled for the most part. Fortunately, this time the right half of the screen gives a brief description of some setting and the options available. The explanations are typical of what is found in motherboard manuals, which is to say they leave a lot to be desired, but it's definitely better than nothing.

Hardware monitoring is integrated on the motherboard and can monitor 2 fan speeds, 7 voltages, and the CPU temperature. One fan header is near the CPU and the other is at the front corner of the board. CPU temperature is read from the on-die thermal diode.

As with other boards based on the AMI BIOS, it is necessary to disable Advanced Power Management in order to enable ACPI - it's an either/or situation, unlike with Award BIOS's. Fortunately, on the Tomcat i810, Tyan has made the issue a lot less confusing by providing a clear choice between APM, ACPI, and disabled. When ACPI is disabled, all BIOS power management settings are disabled.

Power management consists of pretty much the standard stuff these days. Wake on LAN and wake on modem ring headers are available to allow the system to power on in the presence of network activity or incoming call. The BIOS can be set to turn on the system at a specific time. The CPU fan can be shut off when the system suspends to quiet things down a bit. ACPI support is built into the BIOS for added power management under an ACPI compliant OS like Windows 98 or Windows 2000. The system can be configured to power on via hot key or mouse click as well, even from USB devices.

As many other i810 boards are starting to do, Tyan has also included Suspend to RAM (STR) as another power management feature. STR uses the +5VSB power from your ATX power supply to continue to power the system RAM while everything else is powered down (even the power supply) so that the system appears completely off. When the power switch is hit again, the system is up and running in just seconds. You'll need an ACPI compliant OS that is properly configured to take advantage of this feature. An onboard LED is always lit whenever the system is powered on or in suspend to RAM mode so that you remember that power is still being applied to the motherboard. The front panel LED connector supports dual colored LED's that can provide more information on the exact power state of the system.

A nice touch is the ability to configure what the system will do when AC power is restored after a power outage - either remain off, turn on, or resume last power state. This is a feature often overlooked since ATX and soft power became available, but is critical for anyone using their system where it must be on 24/7 or as close as possible. It also allows for users to shut the system on and off from a surge protector.

As always, Tyan's manual is excellent and provides useful information on all aspects of setting up the board. For the novice installer, the best part may be the actual photographs that help guide you through the installation. The CD is straight forward and contains separate directories for Windows 9x, NT4 and 2000. Under Win9x, you get chipset patches, bus master drivers, sound drivers, and video drivers. NT4 only has sound and video drivers, while 2000 only has video drivers. The full manual can also be found on the CD in PDF format.