Excellent, because this is one motherboard that deserves a lot of attention, and Shuttle are clearly a mainboard manufacturer to watch. The HOT-649a is unusual in a number of respects. Firstly, for a dual motherboard, it is tiny. It fits comfortable into midi-ATX cases.
Some dual boards require cases of almost server class size to accommodate the bulk.
Secondly it features a full complement of ISA and PCI slots, with 3 and 4 slots provided respectively. The board layout is compact, and bijou. The huge amount of capacitors dotted around the board is encouraging. Both CPU slots are amply protected by 9 large 1000uf capacitors to protect the delicate areas of the board from power fluctuations and irregularities. 4 DIMM slots are provided, allowing up to 1 Gigabyte of memory to be supported.