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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.
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.
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!
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
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!
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.