Help Please - I need a mobo! - Please read inside

Hi Guys and Gals - firstly, I do appreciate that this is most likely not
the correct place to post this but I have not been able to find somewhere
more relevant.

If this is truly not a good place to post my questions, I offer my
apologies and ask you to please point me in the direction of a good e-group
and/or relevant URL.

Many thanks and here goes.

Having decided to stick with AMD processors as they provide the best bang
for the buck, my challenges really started. Hence this post.

What I am looking for is a first class, very reliable mobo to take a
2600+ (decided that this was the best value around at the moment - please
let me know if I am wrong).

I anticipate paying around the same price for the mobo as the proc but am
happy to be convinced to pay more of less.

I suspect that I will upgrade the board before I have a proc using FSB400.

Must have support for more than 4 eide drives.

SATA might be a worthwhile addition.

LAN on-board might be useful.

Audio and video onboard, not too useful, as far as I am aware(?)

I am not a gamer with high 3D needs.

A slew of ports for all of the options like firewire etc is needed.

Soft tweaking of mobo parameters is preferred to links and switches.

Well that's all folks....

Any suggestions/comments/recommendations welcomed.

Many thanks for any help that you care to offer.

Pete