Slashdot Mirror
New Nano-ITX 12cm Motherboards
Kris_J writes "mini-itx.com have exclusive pictures of VIA's new 12cm x 12cm motherboard standard they're terming 'Nano-ITX'. VIA have removed the legacy ports, moved to mini-PCI and SODIMMs and now a new batch of custom PC projects can be produced where previously there wasn't quite enough room for the motherboard. I already have an idea..."
VIA have removed the legacy ports, moved to mini-PCI and SODIMMs
Good thing Sodimmy is no longer illegal.
Noticable by their absence are the specs though I guess we would see the 800Mhz and 1 GHz Via C3 chips to start with
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
The idea is pretty interesting. I can only hope that it turns out better than this article suggests.
The pics are arranged in a three by three grid, but don't bother. Pics one and two are decent, three is okay, and nine is passable, but the rest are so blurry that once you've heard the board is 120 mm square, they're nothing you can't get from just viewing the thumbnails.
:\
Mom says my
So that's where Sodimm Hussein has been hiding! It's now the mother of all boards!
VIA have removed the legacy ports
I wish these companies would leave just a single RS-232 or RS-422 port. Sometimes you need a simple serial connection to connect through if the network is down. The lack of serial also limits the use for these boards for controlling other pieces of hardware if embedding is your thing.
Maybe an online petition to bring back the RS-232 is in order
Trolling is a art,
That's about the size of your un-clenched hand. I want one.
because what hunting rifle has a bayonet lug
Total Connectivity
Complete Empowerment.
Mleh.
Mom says my
I can't say how many times I've wanted to make a small, embedded controller system, but couldn't do it. Most projects need the ability of pc, but can't handle the space requirements for a desktop sized box. These little babies aught to make my life much more fun, and possibly fully automated.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
Genuine cheap DIY clone portables/laptops with interchangable parts - if a component fails, you dont have pay the earth to replace it? Anyone have good links/experience on that? :-)
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
I think the RS232 is still present : the link is so slow it just has to be over pppd.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Great news!
:)
Gonna wait then for building my multimedia PC until this gets on the market.
12x12cm is awesome... maybe I buy a 2nd one to build it into the glove box of my car
Anyone got an expected price for this thing?
--
One by one the penguins steal my sanity...
12 by 12 centimeters (120 millimeters) is the same size as a CD... I wonder if one could squeeze one of these machines into one or two drivebays... I could definetly use a nice little dev box inside my regular box!
.: Max Romantschuk
FALSE ADVERTISING.
Now I can make that ammo canister pc come true. I could even make Linux run on my MP5!.
Or what about using a US marines trooper helmet as a webserver! Or maybe I can equip a clip with a fileserver.
W00t. My Death/Linux dreams have finally come true.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
my toaster case mod can finally become more than a fantasy!
We thought it had all been done, but now... Imagine a pc modded into a small case, that would be cool.
that board is so legacy free it doesnt even need a power adapter (although it does have a fan header) - that or i am blind
Roll your own notebooks!
Here's an old mirror:
no wait, it's here
What is it with marketing types? First the "mini" and now "nano"... I spose next will be "subatomic"?
Put this in a generic plastic lunchbox, replace the front with a smallish (say 10") LCD, room in there for a laptop hard drive and a CD/DVD... Pc on the go. Only "big" part is the mouse and the keyboard, and those aren't that big anymore.
Cool.
Are we going to have to deal with "nano" as the new XTreme??? Nano means "really really small" (I know, shut up) not "sort of tiny compared to the other ones." 24 square centimeters is not "nano" (again, I know, shut up). 24 square nanometers, now that I might call a nano motherboard. Ghyea.
Mini-itx was 17x17 centimeters, this is 12x12, so 5cm (or about 2 inches) smaller than a mini-itx.
The RAM slot looks like it takes laptop ram, not stadard desktop DIMMs.
The cpu is a 1Ghz C3 processor, hardwired in (no upgrading that once purchased).
3 sound jacks, ethernet (mini-itx vias are 10/100, i assume this is), 2 USB, video out, PS2 keyboard jack, and a TV output. mouse would have to be via USB.
I love my mini-itx server, which is completely silent running, this thing is even tinier, but with a 1ghz cpu i'll be interested to see if they can make a fanless model. the 1ghz mini-itx boards don't passively cool without gluing on a Zalman flower heatsink.
[/itx-geek]
"You worthless post!"
-Shakespeare, 2 Gentlemen of Verona, 1. 1. 147
Not only that, but I expect a lot of new small boxes based on this (and similar) board. Think about multimedia-boxes, gameconsoles, routers/firewalls tablet-size pc's and so on.
Next step in evolution I guess, but an interesting one. This will make large-scale computer-based home appliances easier to produce, and thus cheaper to buy.
Mirror!
--
One by one the penguins steal my sanity...
Actually, the SODIMMS are real hard to change; I'd prefer they use SOBRIGHTS.
I hope they weren't using a prototype of the new motherboard as a webserver... cause if they did it just melted.
take off every sig for great justice
... the site wont let me at them! :O
R
please replace large-scale with mass-produced...
Actually, that's exactly the size of a CD jewel case.
Pretty nifty, huh?
Txurlo
144 square ce'miters, blowhard.
Unless I missed something, the Via website says the size of these boards is 17cm x 17 cm. That's 6.7 x 6.7 inches.
Theres nothing wrong with calling this board 'Nano' ... it is after all
.. it's just that it takes a lot o nano's.
120,000,000 x 120,000,000 nanometers in size, or
14,400,000,000,000,000 square nanometers in area.
Its nano
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
Google - it's not just for breakfast any more.
Erik
According to this page, the shown Nano-ITX board got the following details:
- VIA CN400 Chipsatz (FSB 200 Support)
- 1 GHz VIA C3
- VIA VT8237 Southbridge (support for S-ATA)
- Mini-PCI on the back (maybe for WLAN)
- 1x SODIMM RAM Slot
- 1x S-ATA (one Channel)
- 2x IDE (ATA 133)
- TV-Out
- 6-Channel Sound
- DOC (disk-on-chip)
- Size: 12x12 cm
- CPU-Size: 15x15 mm
--
One by one the penguins steal my sanity...
Too bad this wasn't done by a manufacturer that makes quality products, or this might actually be useful.
That's room for console access, small serial LCD & serial GPS unit. Hmmm..That's one extra serial slot! w00T. BTW, Axion is cheaper than Idot.
LFS. Have you built your system today?
Where can I get a minipci card with LCD control? I'm going to want to use a TFT display with this and I don't want an analog stage between display card and flat panel. Advantech offers socket 370 systems with LCD control in a similar size (longer in one direction) but they cost way way WAY too much. I expect this to be considerably more affordable, in the realm of mini-itx, though with memory costing more since it's on SODIMM.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Offtopic? Hardly. Having general pupose motherboards in this form factor makes them ideal for dropping into a laptop size case. It was exactly what I thought of when I saw this article.
It would be awesome to have a laptop that's as cheaply and readily upgradeable as a desktop PC. It would be awesome if I could drop in a new video card or processor into my laptop.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I would, instead, say that RS232 ports have stood the Test of Time, and continue to do so. Personally, I would never buy ANY motherboard or PC that did not include at least two basic serial ports (either 232 or 422, I don't care which).
The (bad) assumption that VIA is making, of course, is that everyone will be using an OS that supports USB, and that if people need serial ports they'll use a USB-to-RS232 converter. However, the only OS's I know of that support USB to a degree that it's usable are Windows 2000 and XP, some releases of Linux, and FreeBSD.
While that covers a lot of ground, it still locks out specialized applications, such as those in the industrial arena, which need hardware-based serial ports. It also locks out good ole' DOS (unless someone's come up with a USB driver for DOS...?)
Before the Bronx cheers start, let me say that there's still plenty of low-level and specialized applications that use DOS. In fact, much of the programming software for Motorola and GE radios depends on it BECAUSE IT DOESN'T NEED WINDOWS COMPLEXITY AND BLOAT!!!
There are also plenty of devices Out There, including lots of networking and test equipment, that depend on, or can be more easily worked with through, communication over a basic serial port and 'dumb terminal' emulator on a PC. Don't even get me started on the numerous items of amateur radio hardware that use a serial port for communications and control.
I can only assume, based on this latest news, that VIA is simply not interested in selling to market segments where "legacy" ports are still required. Fair enough. I'll stick to "real" motherboards, and VIA can stick to their goodies.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
why not create a ATX tower box with a built in cluster,putting Motherboards on PCI Cards all working together. Imagine 5 PCI card motherboards working in tandem with the main motherboard.
My bad! Read the wrong specs.
If they ditched legacy connectors, why do they have 2 parallel ATA connectors? They have a Serial ATA connector, so obviously they have SATA capabilities.
They might have made it smaller, or kept a serial port, had they ditched the huge PATA connectors that waste so much space.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
How long before somebody tries to squeeze this thing into an old Timex-Sinclair 1000?
DeviantArt Page
NSFWHad they included an SATA controller ononboard they might have been able to make it even smaller. You can theoretically attatch a SATA to ATA converter for use with a CD-Rom right?
This is a total troll, but I feel like a legit response for it. The thing is, open source isn't the best at making new things, agreed. However, it is wonderful for commoditizing of something. Operating systems, word processors, etc, are all things that have been around for decades and aren't evolving at a fast pace. Therefore, it makes perfect sense for these things to be open source.
There will always be room at the bleeding edge for proprietary solutions.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
During our summer vacation this year, my wife and I amused ourselves by taking leisurely drives in Ohio and photographing every diamond-shaped highway sign that we saw along the roadsides. (Well, not every sign; only the distinct ones.) For provenance, I also stood at the base of each sign and measured its GPS coordinates.
This turned out to be even more fun than a scavenger hunt, so we filled in some gaps when we returned to California, thereby proving my theorem of creating 12x12cm motherboards which dissipate heat rapidly, which can be found in LaTeX format on my website.
Sincerely,
Donald E. Knuth
In a shoebox!
Seriously, it would be neat to have a couple of these things sitting around for various projects. You could put a DB on one, apache on another, an appserver on three of the others, and get a feeling for what it's like to be one of the big boys. You could test various load balancing schemes, redundancy options, etc.
mirror
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
I got a connection refused when trying to connect. Here's an ASCII-art mirror of the motherboard:
[]
Man, that's small!
It's not the size of the MoBo, it's what you do with it...
Sorry, someone had to say it:P
That's the deal breaker for me, for any projects I would need something like this for. I absolutely must have ethernet. And I don't want to waste the miniPCI for it either, since I'll be using that for other stuff.
What does this thing use for power? I'm assuming the one blue connector is the power hookup, but what does one hookup to it?
Translation: how do I put one of these in my car and get juice to it?
I wonder what the performance is going to be like with this development. I know that with other SFF (small form factor) boards, there is a performance drop, although the benchmark is getting closer and closer. With the new design here, what did VIA, and what will other manufacturers have to cut out in order to obtain such a small size?
I WANT one!
I've been looking for a better board to stick in my old NES.
...for when mini-itx is just too big.
It's not like you can fire linux at people. And who would you want to fire an OS at anyway? SCO maybe?
Guns are made for killing people (well MP5's anyway) or agressive deer... that's all.
I suppose if you could get Linux installed on some heavy artillary you may be able to circumvent some prohibitive laws against ownership of said anti-aircraft gun.
I'm pretty sure you aren't in the army though (which would be the other reasonable use of this weapon/MP5), or you'd be too shell shocked to type and keep your sense of humor (or probably sense of anything if you were in Iraq right now).
~~I went to battle M.C. Escher, but drew a blank...~~
Nano experts believe it's not a nano-sized board if at arm's length you can see it.
True. That's the reason for patents in the first place, to give inventors incentive to publish their inventions. The alternative, as the inventors of patents were all too aware, is guilds and their secrets. And guilds STIFLE invention (to the point of actually having killed people).
Yeah, VIA's drowning.
Sheesh
I really would like do use one of these but how does one power it? It would seem insane to hook a standard atx powersupply up to one of these mini pcs...
main(i){(10-putchar(((25208>>3*(i+=3))&7)+(i ?i-4?100:65:10)))?main(i-4):i;}
If you want a small computer, check out the pc-104 computers. They are even smaller than this board and available with many stackable expansion cards. Go to www.pc104.org for more info.
I've often wondered about the most space efficient way to manage computing power. I can only assume that 1u rackmount systems have the highest value of computing power per cm^3. Of course they are loud and hot, these nano-itx guys look to be fairly quiet/cool. I can just picture a borg-style cube of these tiny systems in my basement...
Just put a freakin' 15 pin header on the board, and the user can directly attach a serial cable. That's like half a square inch at most! For the cost of a UART, you make the board a thousand times more useful for psuedo-embedded tasks.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
They haven't removed the worst offender of the old legacy PC, however. The BIOS is still there. PCs need to ditch BIOS and go with something decent like openboot. Also, console on an out of band management line needs to be stardand, so you can administer things remotely or when the network is down.
It doesn't need to be legacy serial, though that's what everything else uses. Put it on USB for all I care. Just make sure I can get to the system outside the network, and boot/reset/configure it from there.
I would really like a car radio that could play ogg files off of cd, and to which I could upload music to wirelessly in the 250 to 300 price range. No
Have you found a way to activate the magic SysRq function from the serial console? If you have, does this method still work even if the machine is locked up solid?
Maybe in length, but look at the total size:
(17x17)-(12x12) = 145 = 12.04cm^2
So they shaved off 12 cm squared, which is about a 50% reduction in size. Impressive.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Thats an s-video jack under the rca video jack not a PS/2 keyboard jack. So the keyboard will need to be USB as well.
For those of you who don't really realize quite how small that is, I'll help put it in perspective.
It's smaller than a standard CD jewel case. Amazing really.
RJ-45 port like Cisco has been doing for years. It's practically perfect (other than you're losing RI, which has never been an issue for me). I've run Serial over Cat5 cabling for ~100 ft @ 19.2k with no issues, and higher speeds over ~20ft without a problem.
It's not the standard that's the issue, it's the size of the connector.
Thanks.
How to avoid a slashdotting:
1. Refuse all connections where HTTP_REFERRER like "slashdot"
-Adam
I don't pretend to know if VIA is doing well as a company or not; I personally don't give a rip either way.
I merely observed that the article is loaded with propaganda like "Dawn of Digital Intelligence" and "Empowered Connectivity," and therefore reads like a bad pitch to the board of directors for an okay on a huge, underdeveloped product. These things sound to me just like the rest of the crap you hear 10,000 percent more than you heard five years ago, such as "synergy," "paradigm," and "financial viability." When someone spends more time/money on marketing a product than they've spent developing that product, they use phrases like these to dazzle and distract the customer and their superiors.
I then stated that the ARTICLE contains far too many phrases from the Bullshit Bingo Handbook, which it does.
Sheesh.
Mom says my
Then I learned these things had no firewire... maybe it will in a future revision
--Aaron Greenberg
I'm waiting for these boards to be folded or stacked. pull out board sections and stack them. I want a smaller 3D size, not so much 2D.
If they managed to stack two or three layers that were the same size as a 2.5 inch drive, then that wold be awesome. Heck, even make the stack supports into heat sinks that can mount against the casing.
So how is this Nano-ITX better than the PC-104 boards?
Nice ascii art, but the font size is wrong leading me to get a wrong impression of the size. However it is easy to convert. There are by definition 2.54 cm to an inch, so the 12cm board = 4.72 inches - lets round that to the nearest quarter = 4.75. By definition there are 72 point to the inch, so you need to adjust your browser to a 342 point font. Note that I'm assume that your monitor properly scales fonts to actual size, odds are it does not (generally only macs try, and not all of them get it right), but that is implimentation specific.
I rounded the inches measurement up a little because in most fonts [] does not take up all the pixels it could, and thus isn't exact size. I'm hoping this adjustment brings us to a better average. (likely width still a little small, hight a little big)
I've had a project in mind for a while that this board could be useful for. The problem is that it needs a 9" TFT screen but all the laptops these days seem to be 12" at smallest. Anyone know where I can find a 9" screen with the appropriate plugs to be used as a monitor for a very small computer?
Ok, just wondering if I'm misunderstanding but I hear alot of talk about embeded applications for what is esentualy just a small form factor motherboard and I've also read some prety polerised debates over what constitutes an embeded application in regards to the mini-itx projects posted. What I realy want to know is at what point or what scale does a general computeing device start to be considered an embeded device for instance the seemingly endless posts of mini-itx amo canister pc's touted as embeded are universaly and I think rightfully discredited but if somone builds a vest housing processor, batery and some form of IO device such as a display and a small keyboard it's generaly agreed that it is a embeded or at least a wareable device. where is the line drawn?
My keyboads not woking popely.
Imagine this. The board has only a processor, memory and a firewire interface, and a small rom to get things started.
This board, can fit inside a drive bay, and be used as a second processor on your network. Compiling with +j2 makes sense. As a matter of fact, any processes that doesn't do a lot of I/O but is cpu intensive can be off loaded onto this secondary processor.
Cheap smp!?
what's next, a gameboy?
I run a robotics competition at MIT, and we currently use 3.5" (roughly 4"x6"). form factor PCs. (http://maslab.lcs.mit.edu). The robots do fully autonomous exploration using vision, so CPU power is a real issue.
Our current boards are Geode-GX1 @ 300MHz. Read "Slow". But, they only consume about 0.7A @ 12V. Read "No 40 lb battery".
I've previously evaluated some Eden boards, including C-800 and 667 boards. BUT! Their power is about 2.3A @ 12V. Combined with our motors, that brings our run time under 40 minutes. Ouch.
Power consumption: what is the power consumption of these boards? It really needs to be 15 W or so to be practical for our application. But I bet it's more like 25 W. Can it at least be extremely underclocked?
No serial port? Are they out of their minds? If they're targetting embedded systems (at all), omitting a serial port is completely insane. So many peripherals are controlled via serial: GPS, actuators, sensors, industrial equipment, probably cash registers... Hopefully there's at least header for it, if not a proper DB-9. Anyone know?
I think that what this kind of stuff is leading to is a lot of really clever things being done with portables. The AutoPC failed, for example, but unleash thousands of hackers who will try a thousand different ways of making it useful for themselves, and something useful will come out of it. Maybe even a business model.
With something this small, I'd be tempted to wire together thermometers, maybe a cheapo sonograph (is there such a thing?), and whatever else I could fit into a small box and build My Very First Tricorder.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
So can this little guy get a Linux install that autoboots for a MAME cabinet?
such as "synergy," "paradigm," and "financial viability."
:)
I heard a lot of "synergy" and "paradigm" five years ago, but I don't think the terms "financial viabilty" were bandied about. Unless of course you are speaking of a lack thereof.
Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful
You might loose your computer down the back of the sofa!
Calling it nano is just to ride on the nanotech bandwagon. I guess the inflation keeps growing strong in the hightech industri.
Sure RS232 has stood the test of time. However do you need it on every system? This one in particular? I have a lot of ideas for a board this size, and none include a serial port. Come to think of it, I haven't used a RS-232 port at home in several years. At work I've used them more often, but there we had terminal servers attaching them to the network, or a dedicated machine (486 laptop with a bad battery) in the lab. Never used them on my desk.
I know of applications that abuse a serial port such that a USB-2-RS232 adaport won't work. If that is your applliation don't buy this board.
For most applications though, RS232 is obsolete and not used. Why spend even 50 cents to add it? I don't need it on my set top box. I don't need it on my MAME arcade box.
oh yeah, it is sooo hard to copy the link to your toolbar and press Enter... this only gives the site more time, not a solution to the problem.
Dunno why they're still stuck in VGA-land...DVI-I would give me DVI-D for my projector and DVI-A for people still stuck in the age of VGA and have a plug only slightly larger than VGA. Dunno why VIA hasn't gotten on the DVI bandwagon yet...
grab a CD and imagine it being square, that's how small this board is...
Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers. -- Leonard Brandwein
I am thinking about the Morex 36xx cases.
Here's a review: http://www.bigbruin.com/html/morex_3688.htm
Morex official site: http://www.morexintl.com
further shrinkage around the corner??
What are you really using 232 for?
We use 232 for home automation and often need more then 2 ports. In this case its much easier to use USB converters.
Do you really need to send boot messages through the kernel?
Yeah, and stupid javascript popups, which don't work here, so I am not seeing the photos anyway.
Stupid webdesigners should be shot. Oh, wait, no, just flogged....
The BEST line from the article:
"Click on a picture to enlarge it - probably beyond life size..."
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
What I like about this is that one can be ashured that VIA doesn't try to reinvent the wheel and just builds in stuff that tried, true and cheap and focuses on pushing the size limits without trying to push current perfomance limits at the same time, maintaining a sane price.
Enough people have noticed that 1 GHz works fine for 99,9% of the jobs and VIA offers them an appropriate deal.
Wouldn't be suprised if this kind of stuff would turn out to be the next-gen standard workstation.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
For a moment there I was afraid that this would kill my own pet project, but after seeing what the power consumption is like, I am not worried.
I absolutely DESPISE "engineers" like you. And, I quoted it for a reason. You're the kind of person who believes no good electronics were made after 1975, everything else is just overkill. You probably still have a CP/M machine as your primary workstation because "I don't need all those bells and whistles like color and non-character graphics". You're not an engineer, you're a paranoid old fart who believes all progress is designed to put you out of a job. I've seen far to many of you old fucks in my rear-view mirror over the years, I can't wait until you all die away.
:)
Tell you what, just keep living in your shack sending out mail bombs to everyone who makes some form of modern technology, and leave the rest of us alone. I, for one, am glad to see RS-232 ports finally going away. I haven't used one in five years, and I hope they start migrating off of ALL mobos in the near future. That and that damn printer port. USB, baby! Live the future!
Wow, that IS quite a rant in response to just one line.
Sounds like they've reinvented PC-104. Only bigger. Wish they'd stuck with the established standard.
Forget drivebay: a better place would be to mount it in a car
I don't have a car, you insesitive clod!
No then... I've purged the obligatory Slashdot humor, and now I can tell you that indeed is a great idea!
.: Max Romantschuk
Anybody else think mini-itx should give Stuart (pic provider) a new digital camera as a thank you gift? Man those are lame...
Hey, at that size it could be stuffed into some PDA cases. My newton was bigger than that.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
While it might be coincidence, it's a sign that Ewan knew it was coming. Hopefully it won't be too long until we actually see the boards coming out. Something with only half the surface area of even mini-ITX is gonna be fun.
Is this for PVR and/or DivX/XviD playback?
If so, I recommend an Asus Pundit small form-factor system. Mine has a nice TV tuner ($50), and a Celeron 2.0GHz which ran me all of $67. It has a very nice case, runs quiet, sits well with your entertainment center, and is about three times the CPU power of the C3 1GHz. The way I look at it, this barebones plus a $70 processor is still less expensive than a $100 Mini-ITX case with a $179 1GHz EPIA board. The form factor on the Asus is proprietary, but exceptionally flexible, functional, and not much larger than mini-ITX. I've been very happy with mine!
This may allow me to fufull my dream of taking my motorcycle to a LAN party! This, with a decent LCD is certainly small enough to fit in a backpack. Kewl.
Finally, a motherboard that I can fit in a lunch box. Add in a micro drive, a mini-pci wireless card, and a usb gps and I'll finally have the warlunching rig I've always wanted. Heck, I'll even have room left over for a sandwich (which will no doubt be kept toasty warm).
Self Serving Sig: Hosting Comparison
Sheet metal, sheers and pop-rivets with a nice powder coat finish. You get exactly what you want in exactly the color you want.
Does anyone know of a similar sized board with multiple ethernet ports? It'd be rather nice to have an all-in-one tiny router/firewall. Something with perhaps four eithernet ports and maybe a way to add 802.11b/g? Google has turned up nothing thus far...
The hell you say! That page has been loading for 2 minutes and I don't see *any* pictures. Liar! :-)
Time to skim the rest of the thread and see if anyone's mirroring them. Just need to skip over all the jokes about "guess they're running the site off one, haw haw."
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
no legacy ports? why doesn't via at least use a dvi-i port? those that need vga can then use an adaptor. the rest of us can use dvi-d.
Good riddance. The sooner we all can carry around a gig or two of personal data on secure wireless pen drives, the better.
Now if only they made a board like this with the fastest Athlon and video chip available, good 5.1 sound chip, then you could build a kick-ass gaming PC thats the same size as a Game Cube. :-)
Then again, you'd need a monster heatsink and fan.
If the TV out puts out whatever the VGA puts out right from power on then it's $130 or less for a GameCube LCD which will get you 640x480 in a nice little package and you won't have to worry about a monitor.
You could probably use a standard 3.5" drive for storage but a laptop drive would probably be better and just mount it over the MB.
And you also have to worry about a PSU but you could probably put together an external one like a laptop.
If it were possible to get a complete package down small enough to just throw in a backpack, I'd start working on putting one together. Too bad we have to wait 5-6 months to start playing with them.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
What are those two long blue ports with pins? We know one of them is IDE, I suspect the other is floppy. To be really legacy-free we'd ditch them and rely solely on the S-ATA. My 2 fennigs.
Try a Hush PC. About as small as you can get, no internal fans. (So the only moving parts are the HD and the optical drive. I suggest getting quiet ones.)
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
really how much? it also needs to be cost efficant.
where you have a beowulf or other cluster and you just jam a bunch of these babies into a big raid array like box and then when one breaks you just pull it out and replace it with another and you don't miss a beat! hey you geniuses, someone get on this.
Perhaps they dropped it because they realised that floppys are FAR more expensive per meg than CD-Rs and DVD-Rs? Just a thought.
As for the RS232 port, I'm kinda mixed. On the one hand you don't get that serial boot output. On the other hand, it's easier to hook up a monitor and a keyboard than term into an RS232 port.
Heute die Welt, morgen das Sonnensystem!
Nano-ITX the smallest yet. Now I can put a fully functional computer into a slice of bread, or an old shoe! Think of all the possibilities!
{ - Generic Guy - }
You could install one in anyone's computer at work and listen to their network. Kind of like installing Linux on an XBox and sitting it on your desk.
-=- Many seek good nights and lose good days.
Any one know where you can find a tiny (roughly 12x12x12cm) power supply, kinda sucks when the powersupply takes up most of the room in a project.
Unfortunately using a a Usb to serial dongle makes too much RF interferance to use in a medical environnement, so no luck for you via, well stick to the intel atx boards for our next Pyxis Patient Stations
Sure, IP based KVM's are neato. But then you also need remote controlled power outlets to power-cycle machines which are stuck in ways that can't be fixed without a poke on the hardware reset or NMI button. Compared to what you'd need for systems with proper serial console support including the ability to ressurect hung systems, this IP based KVM stuff is very expensive.
SPDIF can be transmitted optically over Toslink fiber optic cable or electrically over RCA coaxial cable. Real professionals prefer AES/EBU transmitted over balanced XLR cables.
I appreciate the ability to administer a server over the serial port. But it sure is a pain in the ass to set up. You have to run a dedicated cable from every server box to a dedicated terminal server, and then if you want to actually access that server from anywhere besides the server room you end up hooking up that terminal server to your network. Why can't computer manufacturers come up with a system to allow console administration of a server directly over Ethernet? Most MBs have Ethernet built-in now, and every server already has this cable connected. Why must we continue to run a separate, slow network for remote administration?
Check out these Digi Console Servers and also these Cyclades console servers
We use them where I work (Computer Systems Lab at the University of Wisconsin CS department) and it is very easy to set up. 95% of the motherboards in all of our sun/red hat boxes have a RS232 connection, and we use a serial-RJ45 convertor (about 2 inches long, connects to the serial port) to connect the ethernet cable from the digi/cyclades console server to the machine.
The computers all connect to one of the digi/cyclades console servers, which in turn are connected to a few computers which handle which computers are on which ports of the digi/cyclades box. So, to console over to a selected server, simply type "console p23" or whatever in a shell. Can't get any simpler than that. Running the wires is simple because you're already running ethernet, and you keep a digi/cyclades "hub" in each rack. Very little extra wiring.
We live by these things. Very useful if sshd dies or whatever. And, you can send breaks to Sun machines!
//FIXME: Bad
Actually, it may still have one! Serial only requires 3 lines for most cases, and VIA probably just moved the ports to pin headers rather than wasting board real estate with gigantic DB9 plugs. Via has Serial lines on almost [pretty sure] all of the ITX boards. They even have one [CL series] spec'd out with 4 serials [2 internal], 2 nics, and 6 USBs....I don't think they'd forget all the serial fans. Especially for such a small board that begs to control PLCs, Robots, or home automation type apps!
They have PCI cards for Macs! But not for PC's? Actually most SBC industrial computers use an ISA/PCI backplane that "could" do that, but at $500+ for P3s I'm not rushing out to give it a try now am I!
Like posters above said, you get about Celeron 600 numbers out of these guys. But the video chipset helps out extra with hardware acceleration for video..basicly the same as any other Via on-board video.
This is meant to be SMALL above all else. There's nobody else that makes a CHEAP embeded PC, espically when this should be in the $100-$200 range at most. SBCs start at $500+!
All I care about is the ability to plugin to the router or embedded device and view console messages but without adding an older (and additional) port.
My crazy idea is use a Mini-PCI card not as the actual port but merely as a hardware addin for converting and redirecting serial calls to the USB port (and all that wonderful magic behind the scenes). This could even "push" the conversion to outside the box by providing a sort of stub or wrapper set of interfaces for various serial communications ports.
After all, on a train they generally don't check your ticket until you are underway... this saves time and allows the overworked ticket checker to throw the occasional freeloader off the train at high velocities. Don't mind me... I just have had no sleep...
Why cant we give the real size of the board instead of some type of marketing jargon. Why not give boards, sizes much like cloths has sizes.
We dont go round calling a babies T-shits micro-shirts or nano-shirts.
What happens when someone actualy invents an actual nano-itx board. Their not going to be able to name it. And i feel sorry for that person.
I guess these boards have other characteristics like power consumption, but that could easily be overcome with a sub parameter.
so maybe a mini-tix board could be called:
8:40
8 meaning the size of the board and 40 being some type of power consumption rating.
We shouldnt use the english language like a whore. Tap into the vast realm of numbers. If we do, the english langauge will be around to be used on many many devices for many years to come.
The english language: Limited Resource. Stop the mining.
This is my pathetic attempt to make someone laugh.
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
Any BIOS with a USB console, yet? Start thinking first, folks.
open (SIG, "</dev/zero"); $sig = <SIG>; close SIG;
"...this 12cm by 12cm board can support 5 IDE devices, 4 off of the PATA connectors, and 1 of the SATA connector."
Here's an idea: external HDD with software RAID?
So they got rid of all the legacy stuff...but still they have PATA instead of SATA...why?!
[insert witty comment here]