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Thanks guys, the riser I looked at did have logic on the board so I assume it's doing some reasonably intelligent control line switching.

The guys at linitx.com are pretty good at answering technical queries so asking them beforehand would be a good idea. Never asked the mini-itx.com people anything so can't say much about them. Bought stuff from both of them with no problems however.

The riser I've got is this one from VIA. The chip on it is some sort of buffer and not a bridge. I was wrong about it being totally passive but it still does say you can only use it with a VIA chipset board. This is either just because VIA make the riser as well or it really does only work with certain boards.

I've never had any problems with it. I ran a PVR350 and a SCSI card on it with no ill effects. The only thing which had me puzzled for a bit was initially when it wouldn't detect cards properly or misconfigure them. I reseated everything and it worked.