Mini-Box M-100

Craig Mctavern submits this link to a blurb about the Mini-Box M-100 small form-factor computer. Looks tailor-made for a home audio/visual system.

Comments

Put that on a robot!

[tcd004]

I'd love to add one of these m-100's to one of these personal robots and have my own autonomous drink caddy.

Of course, I'd prefer if the hardware was made by Jesus.

Tcd004

3 words: Car Ogg Player

[mhesseltine]

This would be ideal. It has an LCD display, programmable keypad, and does floating point, so Ogg is possible.

Now all I need is a job and some $$$ :(

Re:3 words: Car Ogg Player

[insecuritiez]

"...and does floating point, so Ogg is possible."

If you will recall, the XIPH team re-wrote the Ogg decoder so that it can run on systems that can only do integer math. "Several optimizations were made that resulted in the decoder being twice as fast. We've also tuned the code to be tolerant for those who implement Vorbis using integer-only math. This allows hardware and embedded devices to more easily support Ogg Vorbis playback." http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=4416.

Re:3 words: Car Ogg Player

[TeknoHog]

I assume we're talking about Vorbis, the audio codec of the Ogg family. AFAIK, the integer-only codec is separate from the main Vorbis code and called Tremor (I hope the name has nothing to do with sound quality). There are good reasons why these codecs are mainly developed for FP math; for example modern processors are faster with FP as they are optimized for modern software (a kind of reverse chicken and ogg problem :-).

Openbrick anyone ?

[theefer]

How is it different from the OpenBrick ? Mh this mini-box seems to run a 800 Mhz x86 processor (OpenBrick has a 300 Mhz Geode processor). I heard the OpenBrick could not play DivX smoothly, maybe this is the solution ?

Sounds interesting, has anyone gotten one already ?

Re:Openbrick anyone ?

[luzrek]

The Minibox seems to run the EPIA-M motherboards from VIA with either their 600Mhz Eden or faster C3 processors. The EPIA-M motherboards support direct MPEG-2 playback so DVD playback should be no problem. For more info on Mini-Itx stuff check out mini-itx's website.

Good but...

[Valiss]

The main lure for me is the size. I mean that thing is tiny! For some special project or around the house type things (i.e. an mp3 player for the front room) it could be useful. BUT, the $495.95 definately would make me thing twice about buying this over another (barebones-esque)system. Would the savings in my electric bill cause this to pay for itself over time?

Car Computer.

[Hodr]

A friend of mine has been researching small computers for his car. He wants to run an mp3 jukebox application as well as control a scrollbar in the back window (for when you would like to express yourself to those driving to close behind you).

This computer would seem to fir the bill perfectly, now we just need to find a nice cheap source for a 8x3 inch or so lcd display for the dash.

Not a web server

[Bakobull]

The online store must be using one of these as its server.

I think I smell something melting...

No smooth movies...

[EdMack]

The Mini-ITX boards were reviewed on Tom's Hardware not long ago here

Small form factor roundup on Ars today

[Wee]

This is probably spill-over from the small form factor roundup on ArsTechnica today. There's a lot more info over there about the M-100 and a few others (including the Netdrive, which was on Slashdot a while back).

As for me, next week the birthday elf is gonna bring me a Shuttle SN41G2 and a Athlon 2800+ Barton core CPU -- or I'm going to hunt that little shit down and kick his ass. Santa didn't bring me a tiny PC and it nearly cost him his life. He got to walk away with only having lost two reindeer. The elf ain't going to be so lucky. So pony up with the SFF computer or watch your back...

-B

Seems pricey, & how to do it

[danlyke]

It isn't that much smaller than the iDot mini-ITX machines (I'm just a customer, I've bought a bunch for various embedded applications), which, by the time you stuff in some RAM you had lying around anyway are under $200. If you're going to spend an extra $295 for a display and a few buttons, going super small and super low power with one of the gazillion PC104 vendors seems smarter.

In my house we have two laptops with 802.11b that are almost always close at hand, so running the whole thing headless and just using one of those laptops with a web browser to control the media center seems like the obvious choice.

I need to finish up with code for the web server and media play control, but I've got some instructions on building one of these to boot off CompactFlash into stripped down Linux if anyone cares.

Re:Obligatory

[Pharmboy]

Imagine a beowulf cluster of those!

I did. It would have about the same power as a single new 3.0ghz box...and take up more room. Oh, and cost more.

Re:Car Stereo?

[Xerithane]

Totally. This would fit nicely into my Camaro's DIN slot. If anyone would like to buy it for me, I'll be happy to pay you back with a harrowing thrill ride, accompanied by any music you'd like.

Hmm.. sounds tempting, but do I need a mullet first?

Re:home network storage

[luzrek]

I'm not sure about doing it for less than 200$, but I recently made a silent miniitx system for home to use as an MP3/PVR/Fileserver and it did run about 500$. However, if you wanted just a harddisk/case/processor you could probably build it for about 300$. Here is the breakdown:

EPIA-M with 600Mhz processor - $150

Ugly but quiet case - $50

Harddisk - $80

128Mhz RAM - $30

total - 310$. Note that I left out the CDROM/DVDROM drive. This is because the EPIA-M supports boot from network. If you really want one you could spend another 20$ for a generic.

Re:power consumption

[Waffle Iron]

12V is some crazy low power consumption

That's nothing. My Athlon CPU uses only 1.75 volts of power! I'm taking the ugly heatsink and fan off of that sucker right now because a chip at this low voltage just doesn't need them. From now on, I'm going to run it bare to the world!

Wait a minute... I've almost got the heatsi3nk lo4ose*A#]]x(++ .=-

Re:Forget it with Linux

[WasterDave]

There's a castlerock driver in xfree 86. Now. Finally.

We're talking five days ago, mind. So don't feel so bad :)

Two things of interest:
1, The driver is a result of via and Alan Cox working together.
2, Alan has been using an epia as his main box, and I quote:
"I have two boxes with the relevant hardware. One of them is my desktop box and I've been running the driver as my main desktop for a couple of weeks now."

Seal of approval, if ever I saw one.

Dave