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.

Comments

White Paper

[the_radix]

Also on Via's site, the white paper describing this small wonder:

http://www.via.com.tw/en/VInternet/Mini-iTX.PDF

Uh, it's not that small

[apsmith]

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...

The site:

[llamalicious]

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. ®

It's stronger than me...

[juliao]

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 :)

Regarding the images on their site

[3ryon]

I have no respect for people who don't realize that there is no point in ZIPing a JPG.

Thanks, but no.

[Bonker]

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.

Re:Thanks, but no.

[Junta]

Most are viable points, however, *display* on TV should always, in theory, be fine (though you can certainly tell the difference side-by-side, most of the time you can't tell independently. So the point about playing DVD on TV can be thrown out, computers are no worse, if not better than most standalone players (progressive-scan easier). So you refuse to buy MacroVision products? Have you bought any Paramount VHS tapes? A standalone DVD player? Those are MacroVision encoded. The point is to screw over VCRs, by sending signal spikes that would not be perceived by the human eyes but trick a VCR into reducing signal strength of normal content to compensate. On much older VCRs, which don't automatically adjust the signal, this makes no difference. Also, you can pick up devices to defeat MacroVision at Best-Buy that work perfectly. Pre-MacroVision would mean pre-PCI, this is not new technology. Fortunately, if you search the web enough you can probably figure out how to disable MacroVision for nearly any video chipset.

As an aside to your point, in most cases, MacroVision is typically only enable when the drivers detect that content is being displayed that "shouldn't" be copied, so game recording probably works. I think in most cases they go by process listing and display state, if you open an overlay in a different colorspace, macrovision enables, if realplay.exe, mplayer.exe, qtplayer.exe appears in process table, macrovision enables. This is one of the major reasons companies are reluctant to release open-source drivers for tv-out devices, as they all have modifiable registers for enabling/disabling macrovision, and open source drivers would probably get them it hot water with the MPAA/RIAA.

small mobo = large pricetag for cases/PS

[Sodakar]

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.

Re:Cheap book PCs?

[ackthpt]

Small doesn't always translate to cheap, as a matter of experience it's the opposite. You can get a lot of current mobos for <$100

For more about form factors, here the definitive site.

Re:Perfect for "hidden" home systems.

[adolf]

Also perfect for in-car systems.

Low-power, low-cost, very small, and very few electrical connections to worry about. Also plenty fast enough for anything you'd ever need to do while driving on the highway.

All it takes is a handfull of regular PC parts, some manner of enclosure, and a reliable power supply. The whole thing should end up being small enough to fit under the front seat, which is nice for a variety of reasons (not the least of which that it is climate controlled).

I envision a plain steel box, perhaps from a company like Sescom, or just whatever I can find at a local surplus house. It doesn't have to be easily modified, only solid.

Does anyone know of a source for an appropriate power supply, or a kit, or even just plans for one?

-

Smaller Still

[guamman]

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.

Re:Heatsink? What Heatsink

[Svartalf]

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.

Re:Will serial/parallel ever die ?!?

[retrac]

I guess you only use a computer to play games on.

They actually have quite a few other uses. How do you program a FPGA using usb? how about legacy printers? LED control? modified pushbutton interface? custom card scanners?

I think you need to come to terms that the only use of a computer isn't just to play games with the newsest usb joystick/mouse/keyboard.