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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.
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.
But this is one sweet little box - toss a second NIC in - instant firewall! Very cool.
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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?
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!
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
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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
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
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.
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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?
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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).
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.
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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.
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.
For more about form factors, here the definitive site.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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
...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.
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.
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 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.
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?
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.
You can get a lot of current mobos for under $100
Yes you can get a current mobo for $100, but this includes the processor, which on a standard mobo would be another $100, putting it's total cost at $200.
I for one and looking to buy one as soon as they come out, perfect for a linux router/server if you ask me.
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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?
Dude, this includes Proccessor NIC and Video Card.
:) Especialy if you outfit it with some sort of hot swappable IDE Hard Drive system, LOL!
:)
Hell, for a $50 case + PS combo (ok likely A LOT more expensive for a limited market like this product) and a $30 wirelss Keyboard Mouse combo from A4Tech I would be set.
Oooh yaaah.
Hehe, it already comes with TV out too.
INSANLY cool.
I am thinking Digital VCR here folks.
Hehe, actualy with Flash Memory cards approuching (at as I recall) 1GigaByte now days, hmm, hehe! The MoBo has build in compatability with Flash Memory from what I can tell, LOL! Though some sort of internal mount USB unit could be used as well with a port for the Flash memory to fit into.
Hehe!!!!! Digital VCR! MPEG4 video, w00t w00t!
Man that would rock, though using Flash Memory would compleatly negate any sort of cost savings, LOL!
Still be pretty nice to have a 120GB or so drive installed in this baby and use it to go around with your movie collection sitting in something that you can almost carry in a small backpack, LOL!
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