Shuttle's Tiny PC Reviewed

PhantomHarlock writes "VIAHardware posted a review of a great miniature PC desktop system from Shuttle, the motherboard manufacturer. It's a tiny aluminum case with a floppy bay and one 5 1/4 bay. It uses Shuttle's FV24 mobo, one of the smallest on the market. The motherboard has built in video (with S-Video out), audio, 10/100 Ethernet, USB and dual firewire ports. " Might be a nifty device to use as a stereo component with that S-Video out.

Comments

Interesting Specs

[XBL]

These are from the MWave site (notice the FireWire!):

VIA VT8604 North Bridge
Host interface
Integrated Savage4 2D/3D Graphics Engine
PC 133 SDRAM/VCM interface
PCI interface
ACPI Compliant

VIA VT82C686B South Bridge
UDMA 33/66/100 IDE interface
USB interface
AC97 Controller
Integrated Super I/O controller
Integrated hardware monitoring controller
Power management meet ACPI requirement
RTC

CPU: Socket 370 type CPU
Intel Celeron with 66MHz FSB (100MHz FSB for future CPU)
Intel Pentium III with 100 / 133MHz FSB

FSB
66 / 100 / 133MHz

Form Factor
Flex ATX: 7" X 7.5"

Memory
DIMM x 2, Up to 512MB of 168-pin PC100 /PC133 SDRAM

Graphics
Built in Savage 4 graphics engine

Audio
VIA audio with AC'97 CODEC

On board 1394 chipset
Lucent FW323
1394a OHCI link and PHY in single package
Complies with 1394 OHCI specification revision 1.0
Provides three fully compliant cable ports
Support 400Mb/s, 200Mb/s, 100Mb/s data transfer rate

Ethernet
On board Realtek 8139C
IEEE 802.3u 100Base-T specifications compliant
10 Mb/s and 100 Mb/s operation
Supports Wake-On-LAN function

Modem (optional)
Proprietary Modem riser Module
V.90 compliant

Expansion Bus
1 x PCI
PCI 2.2 specification compliant

I/O
Built in VIA 686B
Support 1 UART for Complete Serial Ports
Support 1 Multi-mode parallel port
Support 1 Floppy Disk Controller
Support PS2 keyboard and mouse

H/W Monitor
Built in VIA686B
Voltage, Temperature, Fan Speed Monitor

IDE
Ultra DMA 33/66/100 mode
PIO mode 4
2 IDE ports

Power Management
APM 1.2
ACPI 1.0

BIOS
Award PnP BIOS
DMI 2.3
2Mb flash memory

Back Panel Ports and Connectors
1 x PS/2 Keyboard
1 x PS/2 Mouse
1 x VGA port
1 x Serial Port
1 x Parallel port, supports SPP, ECP, and EPP mode
2 x 1394 ports
1 x S connector
1 x Composite connector
2 x USB ports
1 x RJ45 port
1 x line-in connector
1 x line-out connector

Other connectors and jumpers
2 x fan connectors
2 x Front Panel USB Connector Header
Front side line-out and mic-In Header
CD Audio in connector
Clear CMOS
1 x ATX power connector

Others Feature
CPU Voltage Auto Detecting (CPU PnP)
Support Suspend to Ram
Power on by Ring
Wake-On-LAN

Re:Interesting Specs

[jandrese]

On board Realtek 8139C

Man, why is it when companies build in NICs on motherboards they always choose the crappiest one they can find? Bill Paul has some choice words to say about this card (taken from if_rl.c in the FreeBSD source tree).

/*
* The RealTek 8139 PCI NIC redefines the meaning of 'low end.' This is
* probably the worst PCI ethernet controller ever made, with the possible
* exception of the FEAST chip made by SMC. The 8139 supports bus-master
* DMA, but it has a terrible interface that nullifies any performance
* gains that bus-master DMA usually offers.
*
* For transmission, the chip offers a series of four TX descriptor
* registers. Each transmit frame must be in a contiguous buffer, aligned
* on a longword (32-bit) boundary. This means we almost always have to
* do mbuf copies in order to transmit a frame, except in the unlikely
* case where a) the packet fits into a single mbuf, and b) the packet
* is 32-bit aligned within the mbuf's data area. The presence of only
* four descriptor registers means that we can never have more than four
* packets queued for transmission at any one time.
*
* Reception is not much better. The driver has to allocate a single large
* buffer area (up to 64K in size) into which the chip will DMA received
* frames. Because we don't know where within this region received packets
* will begin or end, we have no choice but to copy data from the buffer
* area into mbufs in order to pass the packets up to the higher protocol
* levels.
*
* It's impossible given this rotten design to really achieve decent
* performance at 100Mbps, unless you happen to have a 400Mhz PII or
* some equally overmuscled CPU to drive it.
*
* On the bright side, the 8139 does have a built-in PHY, although
* rather than using an MDIO serial interface like most other NICs, the
* PHY registers are directly accessible through the 8139's register
* space. The 8139 supports autonegotiation, as well as a 64-bit multicast
* filter.
*
* The 8129 chip is an older version of the 8139 that uses an external PHY
* chip. The 8129 has a serial MDIO interface for accessing the MII where
* the 8139 lets you directly access the on-board PHY registers. We need
* to select which interface to use depending on the chip type.
*/

The worst part is, it's not that expensive to build decent 10/100 chips these days. NetGear and LinkSys sell decent cards for as little as $5 a pop. There's really no reason to go with the RealTeks anymore.

Re:Interesting Specs

[demon-cw]

The VIA via82c686 chipset IS supported by alsa

Re:Windows XP dumb terminal

[posmon]

except the version of rdc on xp pro limits you to one connection at a time and blanks out the screen of the host pc whilst you're doing it.

Re:Noise level?

[XBL]

I built myself a FlexATX system a while back. I did this for a little server/firewall.

Usually small power supplies like this are quiet, get a low RPM fan for maybe a Celeron CPU, and a quiet hard drive like an IBM, it should be good enough.

Try this case from Yeong Yang

[Uggy]

I like THIS case. It'll fit a normal micro ATX MB and you're not confined to special low profile cards, or limited expansion slots. And it looks a helluva lot better than that shit above.

The Smallest

Re:DIY dvd player anyone?

[jdgreen7]

If it had 2 5 1/4 ports, you could buy the SoundBlaster 5.1 Platinum that comes with the IR controller. It has a 5 1/4 panel that connects on the front for more audio inputs/outputs, and the IR receiver. Then, you could add the DVD player in the 2nd port. I suppose you could get an external DVD player, but then it loses it's portability some.

One good possibility I see: Get the SoundBlaster 5.1 w/ the remote. Run CAT5 into your living room (or wireless LAN), and network it to your other computer. Hook up this system to your TV and Stereo. Now, you can play MP3's over then network through your stereo, and play downloaded movies. Doesn't help DVD ability unless you could find a way to play a DVD over your LAN from another system... interesting possibility...? It would get annoying running to another room to switch DVD's, but how often do you watch more than 1 at a time?

Re:Windows XP dumb terminal

[radish]

I've used vern for virtual desktops on every PC I've used for a few years now, that covers 95/98/NT4/2K and now XP, on a variety of hardware. Give it a spin - not perfect but pretty good.

Chassis produced by AMS Electronics

[HuangBaoLin]

I have a friend who works for the company (AMS Electronics) who makes this aluminum chassis. They sell the same barebones product (called GBOX) direct off their website.

http://www.amselectronics.com/Products/PC_Servers/ CF-7989.html

They've changed the front slightly to accept a variety of clear or colored pexiglass shields. This is a great product! Damn sexy and a perfect PC to lug around (just add handle :P )

another small cheap computer

[jemu]

I have been using an Amptron iCue BKi810 with Linux for awhile. It is cute, small, cheap, but has a nasty loud power supply fan. It has _most_ of the features of the Shuttle, no firewire tho. Performance is ho-hum, but form-factor is great. Amptron Intl.

Re:Windows XP dumb terminal

[mchang]

An alternative that I've been using that is small and fast is VirtuaWin [w1.457.telia.com/~u45706979/]

Re:Apple's Cube

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it was a G4 cube, not a G3. The pricing was what killed it, you could get a G4 tower for around 200 bucks less, and have expandability. The G4 Cube should have been priced between the iMac and the G4 Tower, but wasn't. Thats why they didn't sell very well. I did see just the case of one on ebay selling for over 250.00, and thats just the plastic case.

pk