> was I wrong in stating that they own Hatachi and NEC's electronics IP?
> Or did you misinterpret my statement about NEC to mean any other part
> other than their electronics division

As I read those statements ("owns NEC", "adsorbed Hitachi"), they could be understood as meaning that Renesas is the parent company or owner of NEC and/or Hitachi, when what Renesas owns is just the IP of the (former) semiconductor operations of both.

> Raptor's specifications state that there are two USB 2.0 connectors on the
> Talos II Lite case. [...] There are two front panel USB 2.0 connectors on the
> Talos II Lite chassis

Yes, odd, two ports on the case but only one port according to the specs further down the page.

> since the Talos II supports sound output via hdmi on Radeon HD video cards,
> a sound card isn't actually required.

This feature probably needs OS support more than it needs support by the Talos II ;-)