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The Incredible Shrinking Motherboard
DrGonzo was among several who submitted
news of the new Mini Motherboard from via. The Mini ITX standard is just 170mm squared, and this
motherboard has audio, ether, IDE, video and tv out. Not bad for something
so tiny. Here's an article about the small wonder.
do you know something?
i know you're probably a troll, but please explain what you meant
I know I wouldn't mind having a dozen or so cheap Cappuccino-type knockoffs... building in quantity would probably make them a lot cheaper than the $300+ for an industrial SBC. In-dash MP3 player, anyone?
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these babies! It'd fit in your CD rack.
Also on Via's site, the white paper describing this small wonder:
http://www.via.com.tw/en/VInternet/Mini-iTX.PDF
This
It's not 170 mm^2 but 170 mm X 170 mm, which is 17 cm x 17 cm, or a square about 6.5 inches on a side. Why is it people see "mm" and think small? Anyway as the article says, there are smaller ones out there...
Energy: time to change the picture.
Now why dont Nokia stick one of these in a phone and make a 'phone' that can play halflife not java games!
Troll, please ignore
Why the hell are the images in zip files?
Were that I say, pancakes?
Autonomous, robotic, self-hiding matzoh for Passover.
maybe terrorists are using slashdot to secretly communicate.
Better call ashcroft. I say we send peacekeepers to bomb VA Linux into the stone age, and declare a national terror warning on the 9th of april. Just in case.
But this is one sweet little box - toss a second NIC in - instant firewall! Very cool.
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
Link to the Google cache of this page.
The speed of time is one second per second.
I'm still waiting for a small (Micro ATX or smaller) mobo that will allow for a REAL chip (P4/Athlon), 512MB RAM, ATA 100 HD, CD, ethernet, USB, AND support for AGP graphics. I want this for portable gaming and haven't found the IDEAL board...yet! Still looking....any suggestions?
Only one PCI slot makes it less interesting as a desktop motherboard, and it certainly is not meant as a server motherboard. It does, however, look promising in the appliance area.
Cat, the other, tastier white meat.
is coming down hard... (offer up temporary local mirrors for subscribers and I might bite, it'd also sit well with the people who get taken out from a /.ing)
link to google's cached version
and the text from from theregus.com:
VIA Technologies is expected to launch a very small format motherboard this month. Called the mini-ITX, the fully integrated mobo measures up at 170mm x170mm (yes, it's square), making 50 per cent smaller than the FlexATX form factor, VIA claims.
The Mini-ITX is supplied with an 800MHz Eden x.86 C3 processor (in EBGA packaging), incorporating 128K L1 and 64K L2 cache; integrated AGP2 graphics 2X; PC100/133 SDRAM support etc. You can check out more spec here.
The board will retail for around $100, and gets its first mainstream outing at CeBIT this week.
The Mini ITX is targeted at the embedded market - expect most units to disappear into printer routers and the like; but VIA is also reporting 'grassroots interest' in the product from home PC and commercial system builders.
The Mini-ITX may be small, but it is not 40 per cent smaller than any other form factor around, as VIA believes. The Danish firm, maker of the M-Series PC, deploys a 157mm x146mm mobo. ®
Sorry if I have to point it out, but... :)
170 mm * 170 mm is NOT 170 mm^2
This motherboard is 28900 mm^2, or 289 cm^2.
Still a nice little board, at that
free the mallocs!
There's only one PCI slot - with support for two cards (via a riser?). No AGP. A semi-custom CPU. Not very expandable. What kind of upgrade path will this thing have?
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy.
How expensive are the processors for that board? I've not seen them out in retail.
No offense, Rob, but I don't want a "volatile, highly flammable liquid, C2H5OC2H5, derived from the distillation of ethyl alcohol with sulfuric acid and used as a reagent and solvent" on MY motherboard ;-)
:: We Prefer Having The Right To Manage Our Own Freakin' Media Files, Thank You
MONOLINUX
I've used some BookPC's for second computers and the such. They are awesome for that little size. Looks like mobo's like this will help push the little stuff forward. Once you get past the old "little piece of junk that doesn't compare to my full blown rig", they're capable machines. Having your linux distro recognize all that built-in stuff would be a plus.
I wish that other manufacturers would jump into this boat and push this market further, I'm not buying anything by VIA anytime soon.
Anyone notice how the CPU in the pictures says 'Fan/Heatsink Required' yet there are no apparent mounting mechanisms for them? Guess you could use an adhesive heatsink - but I'd rather not! Ah OK - they've got two screw holes - but they don't seem to be in the usual spots? I guess VIA will ship a heatsink with this baby too? Site doesn't seem to mention it
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
I have no respect for people who don't realize that there is no point in ZIPing a JPG.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
I like the come of the new smaller form factors. They can be used for smaller tasks like replacing the clunky 486's that some people call routers or tweaked out and taken to lan parties.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Could easily be smaller if they got rid of the serial and parallel i/o. Ps/2 needs to go too! There's enough usb stuff out there that something like this shoudln't need them.
I haven't used serial/parallel/ps2 in over a year at least. Disable them all in the bios to save interupts.
-Doug "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -- Arthur C. Clarke
Does anyone know if this mobo has the Problem where upon rebooting the IDE controller switches to PIO mode?
I SURVIVED THE GREAT SLASHDOT BLACKOUT OF 2002!
I'll say it before someone else does :)
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
Although I wouldn't use it as a desktop system (although perhaps for non-techies...), something like this might be perfect for small network-access terminals of the kind used in stores and universities. Even in the home, something like this might be good as a stereo-system replacement (using the PCI slot for a decent soundcard, vs. integrated sound).
Are there any cases that would work decently with this design, though, or would something have to be custom-built?
This mobo is just begging for a beowulf cluster mention, but I suspect that the release price will make conventional solutions less expensive for quite some time.
"Evil company X is threatening to restrict our rights! Let's all get together to stop--OOOH! SHINEY!!!" -- AC
Here's a whole website about Small Wonder!
Ha! I kill me!
C3 doesn't really require that much cooling, and could probably cope with a smallish passive heatsink stuck on with thermal adhesive. The processor is integrated onto the board anyway, so it most likely does come with a cooling solution, but they took it off for pretty pictures.
Just before the site got completely /.ed , I saw that it said that it could support 2 pci cards, but only one slot? Is this some form of riser card arrangement? Did anyone see it before it stopped working?
(170mm)^2.
Best Slashdot Co
I dunno about the rest of you, but I'm pretty excited about this. I know there are smaller motherboards out there, but this one actually seems like it could make a useable computer. I'm working on installing a number of computers in my car, but what I really need is a small, portable computer that can support dual monitors. Oh, well - things are at least getting closer.
If you need to interpret my post, then you don't get it.
have motherboards smaller than this?
He was making a joke about this:
Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday March 13, @01:51PM
from the its-so-cute dept.
DrGonzo was among several who submitted news of the new Mini Motherboard from via. The Mini ITX standard is just 170mm squared, and this motherboard has audio, ether, IDE, video and tv out. Not bad for something so tiny. Here's an article about the small wonder
This would be interesting.
These shitty trolls and such are almost like those worthless blind communist movements of the last century.
Man, I'll tell ya, this would be PERFECT for teminal servers, but I don't see anywhere in the white paper or in the specs about supporting PXE or Etherboot protocols. Most embedded mobos support at least PXE for LAN booting.
Oh well, I guess you can't have it all!
-- 4 8 15 16 23 42
Will sort out the last problem. Please take photos of your wonder and what you use it for in the car.
not to karma whore or anything but, check Google's HTML version of the PDF
Anyone notice this in the description of TV-OUT:
Integrated Macro Vision 7.01.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Its got quite a bit of onboard I/O on it already. AGP video, sound and ethernet have been taken care of as has TV out. What would you use the PCI slot for other than maybe a modem or second NIC? This isn't meant to be a mainstream gaming machine or desktop box... However at the price they've quoted I'd bet it would work well as a portable MP3 box for the car or whatnot. It's ogt lot's of possibilities IMO. Maybe slap a wireless card in it and go wardriving with it? :-)
P.s. Looks like one of the optional modules was a cable for a "2nd PCI device" so perhaps it's more flexible than you realized?
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
This is a great looking mobo, but as it stands they don't seem to mention any ITX size cases. I'd hate to buy this cute little mobo and not have anywhere to put it except my big oversized ATX case
I'll have something intelligent to add one of these days...
is this what it sounds like, and if so, why do they think their customers need it?
Mini-iTX
170mm 170mm
iTX
215mm 191mm
Flex ATX
215mm 191mm
Mini ATX
284mm 208mm
ATX full
305mm 244mm
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Storage (Flash): DOC Flash memory (8MB ~ 32MB) on board
Anyone know the purpose of this flash memory is? I would hope it can be used to boot lilo or other similar loaders. I was pleased to see this mobo has no floppy controller. A little off topic, but why not integrate motherboards with a Type I PCMCIA slot? IMO, CompactFlash would make an excellent (and logical) replacement for the floppy drive, especially with the vast amount of cameras and mp3 players that use it.
I once had hopes for an magnetic media-based open standard to replace floppies (Iomega Zip) but not anymore. Even Award and AMI was forced into supporting zip drives as a bootable device option. IIRC, the zip drive is probably the only proprietary piece of hardware supported by these BIOSes (for AT/ATX standards).
... and some people might celebrate it "appropriately"...
From the video specs:
* Integrated Macro Vision 7.01
Macrovision is a feature on just about every TV-out card you can buy today. This means that you cannot do any of the following without macrovision interference:
- Tape a video game. Sure, who would do this without being a complete gamer luzer. I can think of a few reasons to tape video game play. The one that comes to mind most readily are the occasional tournaments that happen on the MMORPG's and Shooters. Wouldn't you like to have a permanent record if you were the victor or a high ranker in such a tournament?
- Produce your own video to tape. You produce an original video, but you can't tape it without interference patterns or light noise. This doesn't even aid the hollywood studios, other than cutting potential amature video producers out of the loop. Mostly it just aids producers of high-end video hardware which gives the user control on the kind of output and copyprotection he wants on his stuff.
- Reproduce non-copyrighted or grey-area video. Anime fansubs are very rapidly becoming an all-online phenominon. Non-english anime videos are recorded from TV or other sources, subtitled, and then distributed for free in areas where that video is not otherwise available. Suppose you wanted to share such a video with someone who doesn't have a computer and can't play back Divx files? Unless you have a way to bypass macrovision, you're SOL.
- Play DVD's from your computer's DVD player on your TV. If you had a perfectly good Computer DVD setup and TV out device, why should you bother buying a separate standalone DVD player? Ease and convenience, sure, but many who don't care or are trying to save money, this is an extra expense.
Until I can get a video-out card that doesn't have macrovision enabled, I'm sticking with my pre-macrovision Matrox PCI card for TV out purposes.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Well, considering the ATX form factor of a new cabinet (like the one I *just* got), if it were 150mm on a side, you might be able to pack two of them in a cabinet. Which has some possibilities. As it is, it's going to fit a smaller box, great. Be like the Apple cube or something.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The Abit NV7m. Based on nVidia's nForce chipset. Supports Athlon XP's. Up to 1 Gig of unregistered PC2100 DDR RAM. Built in audio (nVidia, but I'd add a nice GeForce 3 Ti 500), sound (which is actually very very good) and LAN. MicroATX form factor. Lowest price is about $130 on Pricewatch, which is damn good.
In other words, you're stupid if you don't go this route. I'm planning on building a full-featured LAN box with one of these, and I'll be spending about $1500 to totally deck it out - and that'll be with a 15" flat panel monitor for hauling to LANs.
See you at Quakecon.
Every once in a while I like to masturbate a new word into my vocabulary, even if I don't know what it means.
Get a life eric or maybe an email address.
Small motherboards are great. Unfortunately, most local vendors still carry computer cases the size of bathtubs. Can anyone recommend some sources of small computer cases to go with the smaller motherboards?
FlexATX, NTX, ?TX.... I admit I don't remember all the form-factors anymore, but one thing that has always bit me was the large pricetag for the cases and mini-power supplies. So... to all of you who are saying "this will make a small, quiet, cheap system..." I agree that it will be small and quiet (most 200W PS's are quiet), but I don't agree that it will be "cheap" -- the case and PS will probably cost $100. (and yes, I know PC cases can cost as high as $300, but the average, plastic case + PS is $30)
There's always two major sacrifices for size -- and they usually are performance and cost.
Still, I'm hopeful, as I would love to have a webserver the size of a Cobalt/Sun Qube, but at a comparitively low cost.
Maybe you can underclock by half so it doesn't need a cpu or power supply fan. At 400mhz it would still be a pretty good web server for static pages.
We have no mothers boards in Kanzlekistan. Please send me yours.
-Jon
for the info
Many network cards and sound cards today are 1/2 as wide as they were a few years ago, now they just have to make the part that you connect to the case 1/2 as wide. Small change there.
This design in the article is the 'throw away design'. If something goes you just throw the whole thing away. Kinda like PDA's.
Only 'flamers' flame!
what i want is a machine aboutthe size of a minidisc player. but about twice as thick. and use minidiscs as removable storage - but it has to have an embedded geforce video.
but this thing would do as well - as long as it can be incorporated into something the size of a cd player. and still must put a geforce chipset on there... even in a daughter board configuration.
I bought a smaller motherboard from Freetech a while ago with everything, and I mean everything, on board. It will take any PIII processsor and even includes firewire. The dimensions are about 150mm square. If anyone is interested, you have to buy it from Freetech directly, in Japan. Fortunately, VISA gives great exchange rates from dollars to yen. Check out this for more info.
Autonomous, robotic, suicide bombers!
What better time then passover to blow up some Zionist opressors!?
I missed of the on-board Firewire and also the onboard Quad-IDE-RAID, i.e., the motherboard can control 12 IDE devices at ATA-133 speeds. ABit Press Release (Tongue in Cheek) Here
floppy, hd???
we have the spacewalkers setup
diskless booting over the net...
imagine the size of the case without
hd, floppy, cdrom and as another
poster pointed out, get rid of the
parallel, serial, ps/2 ports on
the board and make itself smaller
too....:-)
at this point you'd probably need
a remote controlled alarm sound,
so you can refind that goddamn thingie..:-)
drool
remo
Doesn't need one at normal speed. Have many SV24s with no fans except in the power supply (no case fan or heat sink fan). The C3's don't neem'em.
Products like this are good news hopefully the PC manufacturers will take the opprtunity to design some cases with the imagination that Apple apply.
There should be no reson why good design is ring fenced for the benefit of the Mac.
All it will take is a manufacturer with imagination to exploit the opportunities MoBo's like this offer and build some really exciting PC's or home appliances for the home market.
They'll be relatively inexpensive. Retail for the whole shebang should be something on the order of about $300. They're gunning for set-top box territory with these, meaning that they have to be relatively inexpensive to begin with.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Okay the boards I list below are OLD NEWS. I've owned a PC-2553 for over a year, and a friend of mine picked up the PCM-5822 long before that.
size: 145 x 102 mm
http://www.lannerinc.com/pc-2553.htm
size: 90 x 96 mm
http://www.advantech.com/products/PCM-5822.asp
Google's cache
and why should people care?
This is a BGA mounted part, meaning no upgrading CPU (This is less of an isssue than you'd think...) and I think they may not have the 900+ parts in the BGA form factor yet.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
It's got a Macrovision chip. Is it possible to disable or bypass this or would this be a violation of the DMCA?
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
There's not much amazing about this. IDE, LAN, and sound are all on a standard Southbridge chip (like the ones by VIA), and video is integrated in cheapy Northbridge chips.
Just not putting on PCI slots makes a motherboard this size.
It's not MEANT to be upgraded, though. RAM, HD, and DVD/CD drives are the only "upgradeable" parts in this design. This isn't intended for the gamer/hardcore crowd. This is intended for the office space crowd and the home crowd where they have some minimal usage of things like games and DVD playback, but need a largely maintenance free machine that will do things like wordprocessing, etc.
/. crowd generally falls under.
MOST people that want/need computers actually fall under that category, not the one that the
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
If your only beef is the lack of PCI it CAN take two cards. It also has 10/100 Ethernet on it so it can network just fine. With everything it's already got I was just wondering why more than one PCI card was so important. Insight is all...
TV tuner makes sense, I hadn't thought of that but what else? I'd think that for many people this sucker would be pretty good. Not for a super-duper server or anything but you've got to give them credit - they put an awful lot into it.
Hrm, wonder if it could be run off of a 12volt battery pack or gel cell. That CPU very thirsty? Very hot?
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
I just ordered some Casedge Micro/FlexATX small cases from www.techstore.com for ~$40. Some shops have the AOpen H340D with 180W P4-rated PSU (from Sparkle) for $45-50, too.
This is freaking awesome! Now, if they only had an order form to BUY one now! I'd be all over that like a fat kid on a smartie.
hmmmm.... you mean the /. effect ?? :)
I'm building a FlexATX box around the Intel D810EMO board, and that's pretty tiny... and these motherboards are smaller than that.
if this is the cure for living room computer needs, then does it support Direct3D 5.1 audio through S/PDIF?
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
I know that the 2D/3D is from a Trident Cyberblade core, the sound's an unknown, but they claim at least soundblaster support (not as good as could be, but hey...), and I believe that the ethernet's supported under the latest stable kernels.
As for performance, it's so-so. I've got an ECS box, branded the i-Note in hand, courtesy of my employer, that I've been playing about with. It's got a different (read: known to be supported and autodetected by Red Hat and others...) ethernet and sound chip choice, but I can give out some performance figures for the CPU all the same. For integer performance, it weighs in at the same basic performance level as a Celeron of the same clock speed. For floating point, it varies from task to task, but it performs anywhere from 1/2-3/4 as fast as a similarly clocked Celeron.
As a gamer's toy, this has some, but limited appeal. As a general consumer device, this has some things going for it.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Screwholes those aren't- they're those plastic rivets like you see on some of the earlier fansink setups on display cards. Also of note, the info on the chip says "Fan/Heatsink Required", but this beastie is just perfectly happy with a properly sized passive sink. I've seen boards with this CPU (with slightly different parts choices for ethernet and sound) that have this nifty gold colored heatsink that extends only about 3/8-1/2 of an inch above the chip- and they work very well.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
(Specs here)
This thing has PS/2, video, audio, 2 USB, 2 firewire, an expantion slot (PCI), takes up to a 1100MHz S370 CPU, and a gig of ram.
Contrast this to the mobo from the story, which has an integrated CPU (yuck!, plus it's a Cyrix based, double-yuck!) and no firewire.
I'm using the FV-24 for a project of mine and am VERY happy with it. Plus, it was only about 150USD retail, and it's already out there, available.
I know the craze in the computer industry has been to make everything smaller, but there are those of us out there who still like to see large motherboards. I mean having a computer that is the size of a toaster is cool, but when you try and upgrade it's pretty much imposible. Add to that the increasing ammount of on board options that come standard (some of which are difficult to completely turn off if you want to use your own sound, video, or drive controlers). I'd just like to see a full size board that can be upgraded easily and has slots to put many cards in.
I like replies better than Karma, even if they are flames, because that tells me I got someone thinking.
will it allow me to float around like bugs bunny?
oh, you meant etherNET?
It would be an exception rather than the norm for boards in this class (which are generally intended for set-top and managed PC systems...). I've got several differing variations of this sort of motherboard as well as others in this class- they all support PXE.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
check out:
s av age_pm1.htm
http://www.flexus.nl/209/p6f209_is_used_via_pro
for a more flexible 17x17cm m/b complete with Linux support.
For some applications, 32Mb is all you need to support a Browser with enough plugins to handle most of the Internet- including distance learning applications.
As for the question of the Type I slot; Type I is not terribly useful compared to having a Type II/III slot or a CF slot. In the case of not having a Type II/III slot, it's a little pricey. In the case of a CF slot, you can cheat and just map the device to the IDE chain- but they don't like doing that because they think they're going to be selling a lot of these things for IADs and they don't want anything that might be useful for repurposing the device. (Don't get me started on that- it's a battle I've had on many occasions over the past year with these people...)
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
TV Out?
;)
You guys really want to see your 1600x1280 X11
desktop on a PAL, NTSC or SECAM device? Kidding?
I'd rather like TV _In_ connectors *grin*
But for the rest, these would give a nice
beowulf cluster, while playing mp3z in
hexadekadeo-surround
My Karma isn't excellent, damn it! (And
I wrote an email to their International Contact stating that I can't use this product because of Macrovision; I suggest others do the same (although copying verbatim is probably not appropriate in this case) The text of the e-mail follows:
s p I was very disappointed by
Hello,
I am the chief engineer of an embedded system builder in the US, and I was
excited to read the announcement for the Mini-ITX motherboard. I've been
pricing and scoping out features of various biscuit PC, PC104, etc...
formfactor motherboards, and it appeared that the Mini-ITX motherboard had
the right features.
However, upon reading the specifications on the VIA website at
http://www.via.com.tw/en/VInternet/mini_itx.j
mention of "Integrated Macro Vision 7.01" on the TV Out. Macrovision is not
a product feature; Macrovision is an obstruction. To my understanding, all
Macrovision does is prevent customers from video-taping output from the
device. With the myriad of possible system applications for a motherboard,
what warrants inclusion of such a problem? This product will not meet our
needs unless this feature can be removed, disabled, or omitted from
production entirely.
Please advise,
--(my full name)
The International Contact specified on their website is:
Richard_Brown ATSIGN via.com.tw
...integration.
You need PCI slots for things like video, lan, and sound. If they're all on the motherboard you don't need much in the way of PCI slots.
What's so special is that this doesn't NEED a fansink, consumes a teacupfull of power compared to most other modern machines and weighs in somewhere between the prior generation of hardware and the top-end right now. It's enough for using in offices, etc. and is priced at the pricepoint for just the motherboard cost for the other machines.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
The iMac mobo is small and circular! Beat that!
I have a website. It's about Macs.
in WinXP, when I use EITHER the TV-Out or the external monitor, I can drag the DVD window to the external display, but everything inside the window (the movie!) dissapears.
When I boot into Linux and play the movie in xine, it's fine, on TV out, on external monitor, on whatever....
Does this have anything to do with MacroVision? If so, it's obviously something that can be turned off. If it's not MacroVision, what the hell is it doing this anyway???!??
I've mirrored the original with a couple of changes Here
I was pretty happy to read that they included consumer S/PDIF digital audio out. Then a little farther down in the specs, it says:
One S/PDIF out (optional and multiplex with RCA TV out)
Doh. That sucks. So I can't drive my (composite) TV and digital receiver simultaneously? Hopefully there's a way to split out the digital audio before the multiplexor and add another jack.
I agree that this thing has some limited appeal because of its expected performance. Are there any Nforce based motherboards on the horizon with a similar form factor? The superior cpu (AMD), memory architecture, graphics (GeForce2MX) and sound on a nforce based motherboard would make it a serious machine for the space conscious.
-- Button up, your ignorance is showing
www.techstore.com will not work with Netscape Navigator or other browsers using only HTTP protocols.
Unless I enable Javascripting (which I NEVER do to untrusted web sites such as this one) I cannot even get anywhere on www.techstore.com
I will not be bookmarking it nore visiting it for any of my case purchasing needs.
There have been a Javascript related expolits every couple years and until I stop seeing them for 3 years I will not use Javascript.
NEVER have I ever seen such a thing on a RETAIL site. EVER.
Congrats to them for losing a potential repeat customer that values HTTP standards and values security in all their web purchases.
They should hire more talented web designers that know how to use regular HTTP to design a store front as 100% of all the other wev sites I buy things from use.
2001-11-06 18:46:10 VIA Announces New Tiny Mainboard Design (articles,news) (rejected)
... it's: "My name's not Shirley, and I never jest".
yeah just thougth id point out cause i dont think anyone mentioned this yet, but this board has no floppy disc controler. i guess you could use a ls120 on the ide chan to read floppys but id rather use a 9 dollar floppy then a 100 dollar ls 120.
-
The real news here is that it costs $100. There have been single-board PCs smaller than this for years, but they've typically been low-volume items sold at much higher price points.
Get one of these, $139 for the mobo + case and power supply. Just add CPU, memory, hard drive and CD/DVD.
2 18 .htm
I had a drive, CD and floppy lying about, so I bought one
of these for my parents with a 950 Duron and 128M RAM.
Whole thing ended up costing me about $225.
http://www.msicomputer.com./product/netpc/Slim6
remember that?
Get rid of the 5.25" bay, the 3.5" bay, the serial ports, the parallel port. Maybe even USB, eventually: Firewire is a superior tech. But let's leave one USB there for fun. Oh, an Ethernet port, of course. And a modem port.
Here's where we get more fun out of life. Imagine it's 2005. IBM brings out MRAM on schedule, which is non-volatile RAM: no data loss on power down.
We'd use some standard volatile RAM, probably just cache, to store things we don't want people to look at, particularly. So if the DRM stormtroopers grab your box, the evil bad MP3s get wiped wihout hope of discovery when you hit the panic button.
The box is about the size of a paperback book, or maybe a VHS cassette. Two 1394 ports, a USB port for a keyboard, a digital monitor port. It has no hard drive, but, say, 10 gigs of MRAM. I have no idea what the power supply would be like; that may spoil my dream here. Okay, let's add a flash memory slot. For a CPU, let's say we go with the usual nanometer-level fab process, only instead of cranking the MHz up, we bring it down; this reduces the heat output a lot. Maybe a 500 MHz wonder.
Optionally, you could put a cheap LCD screen on one side, maybe with a stylus input for those times you are sans keyboard. Then you can be covered if you want to carry this around.
Okay, let's add a cheap camera. And a microphone and cheap speaker or earbud? Okay, there is a phone posibility there.
Hmp. Let's put an 802.11 variant in there for wireless networking.
Okay, let's dream some more, and instead of a battery, the thing runs on a couple of ounces of butane for a fuel cell.
And let's just imagine this thing costs, oh, five hundred bucks.
I see *A* future, and this is part of it.
In the issue 04/2002 of the c't magazine from last month there was a test of the Eden 1500 (VE1500). The article isn't available online but here's a short summary (hmm... took me a while to find that issue :):
The VE1500 (the test board was labelled VT6010 for any reason) is shipped with a 533 MHz processor. The passive heatsink is glued directly onto the processor, there's a second passive one on the VT8601A aka Apollo PLE133 nortbridge. FSB is 133 MHz, they got only PC133-333 RAMs working. The memory is shared with the Blade3D graphics chip of the northbridge.
Did you know that VIA violates their own spec with this board? According to the spec there shouldn't be any 3.3-Volt supply but the board uses a standard ATX connetcor. An ITX power supply is only supposed to provide 47 Watts on three outputs (5 Volt Standby, 5 and 12 Volt). There's also a "problem" with standard ATX supplies: Even under full load the board neets only 7 Watts but a standard ATX power supply sucks much more.
Additionally the VE1500 got only 59 points in the BAPCo SYSmark 2000 benchmark under Windows ME. SYSmark 2001 under Windows XP didn't even run. The rating is equal to the Sony Vaio PCG-C1VFK (Crusoe TM5600 @ 667 Mhz) or a Celeron 400.
If I read the spects right does the DOM offer the ability to drop the HD? :) With no noise for that and a hack adapter to pop in lets say 1/2 gig or even 1 GB of Flash would be one super quite little box!
This is getting closer to the next level of PC. IE A brick you can program to drop on a problem that can do things! That does not cost both by it and the tools to get it to work.
There are a lot of situation where quite, simple all in one excede fast, noise and big.
Let's see. I sometimes work for a tech school. I wind up doing a lot of writing copy and correspondence. I occasionally need to access spreadsheets, and sometimes I need to pull up an Access database. (I know...pity me)
I have an IBM Thinkpad 365X laptop. It runs Windows95 and Linux. It runs at 133MHz. It runs Office97 fine on the Windozer side. It also weighs 8 pounds. I keep it in a laptop backpack. It is heavy enough to where I call it "the papoose" at times. I could kill for something a bit faster than that laptop and much more portable. I've seen and used the Cappucino. It weighs a lot less than my laptop. It's my idea of portable.
If I could build a chibi-chibi PC that I could easily transport between the office and home, I would no longer have to join the fight over the two usable workstations or lug my laptop around. All I would need would be a spare keyboard, monitor and mouse. Tech schools tend to have tons of those on hand.
I am looking forward to small, portable computers using this new setup. No, this would not be the box to bring to a LAN party, despite the fact that you will be the only one there without a hernia. However, as a "take to the LUG meeting" machine or a freelancer machine it will truly shine.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Since '81 when I first started messing with PS's the only time I can think of when I upgraded a CPU was one of the early more effecent 8086 versions. I've downgraded a few because of fried CPUs for friends but in that case most of the box should have been thrown out.
I figure its about time they start shipping the boards with 128mb of ram and maybe one socket to add more. That would work find for the application I have for this board.
I can really see how nice it would be to have integrated technology on one motherboard so my consumer box isn't unnecessarily large, noisy and consuming a lot of wattage.
But I wonder: can the same kind of reduction in form factor here be converged with all the efforts being put into making server blades that fit gobs and gobs into rack mount chassis?
It would be great leveraging if the technology used to make the single computer consumer box were the same technology used to make high density server farms.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Isn't most of the size of our MBs for expansion slots? Cutting them out isn't really a big innovation.
I WOULD like to ask tho, in this age of miniturization, why are there so many chips on our MBs, and capacitors etc.
Can't they integrate it all to a handful of chips?
I mean, why does my sound card have a dozen capacitors?
"We'd use some standard volatile RAM, probably just cache, to store things we don't want people to look at, particularly. So if the DRM stormtroopers grab your box, the evil bad MP3s get wiped wihout hope of discovery when you hit the panic button."
:)
That's what they want you to think. That panic button will probably transmit your volatile RAM to some secret agency (or megacorp marketing group) in 2005
A 200W powersupply? Are you kidding me? VIA's Eden platform is ultra low power! The CPU doesn't even need to be cooled by fans. I think a 60W powersupply would be enough, if you had a low power harddrive, such as a solidstate CF HD... or one of those low power platter based drives.
http://www.casedge.com/html/nlx_slim_desktop_mx213 n.html
Agree with billmaly, very nice little tiny mobo, but I also want "a REAL chip (P4/Athlon)", AMD inside in my case.
t xm 5_intro.htm
I've been searching long time ago for a portable yet powerful PC. Right now I'm stucked with a Joyance steel Wallmount ATX chassis (two 5.25" external bays, one external and one internal 3.5"), a Sony SDM-N50PS 15" LCD screen, and an IBM space saver keyboard (with an integrated pointing stick, I won't buy a keyboard without an integrated pointing device, I don't like mice nor touchpads). Now this is not portable, just smaller than similar solutions.
I don't think there is nothing really powerful nowadays below the microATX form factor.
After more than two years websufing for something really portable with a capable CPU, 512MB of RAM and a big hard drive, the only thing I like is the BSI FieldGo-M5 series rugged portable lunchbox computer.
http://www.bsicomputer.com/portable/pcatxm5/pca
It ports a 15.1"LCD and even has an optional rubber membrane keyboard. I have an obsession to ultra protect keyboard and screen, so I would add a keyboard globe and a 3M filter. The integrated HulaPoint pointing device is a cool one, most lunchbox computers have keyboards with an integrated touch pad (don't like 'em at all).
It would be perfect if the keyboard had backlighting like this one has (SL-86-911): http://www.accesskeyboards.com/tipilluminated.htm
It is a beautiful rugged aluminum black box that holds a micro-ATX motherboard, there I could accomodate my Athlon.
And now the BIG problem: I don't think there is a barebones deal (just the chassis with keyboard and screen), I just mailed them asking so but I have few hope.
If I found a barebones deal like that for about $1500, tomorrow I would sell my Sony LCD and my ATX motherboard, and would get it with a microATX mobo. A nylon carrying bag, a built-in UPS 250W, maybe an AC/DC Battery 160W (hehehe, not much battery time there, I can live without it), and on my way to portability without those horribly limited&closed notebooks.
The ./ effect? Maybe if you're trying to execute the page, otherwise I'd go for the /. effect.
Sorry about the link (it got a blank space in it), I'll use href this time, here it is again: FieldGo M5 Me dumbass, I just found there is an ATX model, the FieldGo R9. Holly S, that way I wouldn't have to sell my actual ATX motherboard, I could even dream about upgrading later (much later) to a double cpu one (would 2 fit in?, I think so). Anyway I don't think there is a barebones deal, I'm not buying anything else. Why would they make an expensive and sophisticated case and then load it with expensive unsophisticated components?. Yes, of course. Nite all.
I was looking around to get something really small. Found one from Cellcomputing. But it was waaayy to expensive. about 1200$. So 300$ is not that bad.
The SaintSong motherboards... for example, the TX2: http://www.saintsong.com.tw/english/products/mb/tx 2-e.htm
I have some old 386 mobos that are about 6" on a side. What am I bid for these small wonders? :)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
>C3 doesn't really require that much cooling, and could probably cope with a smallish passive heatsink stuck on with thermal adhesive.
I've sold C3 integrated motherboards (and, other than heat generation, nothing has changed with the cyrix CPUs, IMHO). These processors require approximately the same cooling as a 486. A larger passive heatsink would probably be fine, but the boards I sold had what at first look appeard to be a 486 CPU fan.
If you want a cheap board with a small size, 100% integrated, mostly linux supported, cheap (in all ways), and availiable now, seek out the PCChips M787. It is VERY similar to this board, just 2 slots bigger. Plus it fits in ATX cases and uses a trickly of power supply. The fan is almost inaudible, so this is an awesome home-entertainment mobo.
But really, its cheap in all senses of the word. Don't say I didn't warn you!
Its no wonder that Geeks are notoriously bad with women when you consider that we are interested in things that are smaller and smaller than their counterparts...shrinking "things" are not something women are interested in...explaining why smaller "things" are better also is not something they are interested in...how appropriate that this is from the its so cute dept...haha;)
--"It's Bradford Company, slash your last name, dot your first name"
But where do I get a case for this thing ???
Don't buy a VIA motherboard. Random crashes with FAQs which point to changing every single component in the system ("we don't know"), soundcards which beep in your ear with voicecomms and ending up in a situation that you are too afraid to change a damn thing in your system less your online match in 3 days time in threatened...
(Can you guess I made a mistake when upgrading my system, ok, its windows, but I haven't had so much trouble since SCSI clone cards)
These type of small systems would be grat for lan gaming etc. Now if i can just find the right type of a light monitor to go with it.
Can anyone recommend a light 17'inch monitor good for network gaming? (How are LCDS nowadays?)
and a good Real Time Kernel (Hello Qnix) would make it much more powerfull than anythong Nokian can do.
Just... well, batteries...
Theorem: 1 - 170mm (17 cm) is more or less the average length of a penis. 2 - The designer of this m/board think it is very small so: 1+2 => all the designers are John Holmes' childrens.
667 The Neighbour of the Beast
I'de love for PC to become small enough so that the keyboard can contain the computer, kind of like the C64/128