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Move Over Mini-ITX, Here Comes The gigaQube

Posted by timothy on from the product-before-its-time dept.

Jim Ethanol writes "Since there's been a lot of interest lately in Mini ITX based servers I thought the Slashdot crowd might enjoy checking out Project gigaQube. The gigaQube is a modified Cobalt Qube 2 server appliance with 240 Gigabytes of storage running NetBSD's Mips R5000 based Cobalt port. Cobalt Qube's are quiet, cool looking little (7.25 x 7.25 x 7.75 inch) servers that when modified, make a powerful home server solution. They also seem to have achieved 'fetish' status in Japan. See some gigaQube action shots here, or check its vitals here."

3 of 209 comments (clear)

  1. I'd rather have a Mini-ITX -- and I do! by steveha · · Score: 3, Informative

    I built a Mini-ITX file server. It has three 120 GB hard drives; they are running Linux software RAID, so I have the same amount of storage as the gigaQube... but I can have any one hard drive die and I'm okay.

    The gigaQube is smaller, but my Mini-ITX file server is small enough for me. It's also extremely quiet.

    Details:

    It's a VIA EPIA-M motherboard, with a 1 GHz "Nehemiah" core. It has two IDE controllers onboard, and I used an IDE controller PCI card to get another available controller for the third drive. The case is a common Mini-ITX case, almost a cube shape, which I got at the Fry's Electronics in my area. One drive is mounted in the (only) hard drive holder in the case; one drive is mounted in the 3.5" external bay; and one drive is mounted in an adapter bracket which is mounted in one of the two 5.25" bays. I actually have one 5.25" bay free, but I don't need it for anything. I use the 100 Mbit Ethernet jack on the motherboard for hooking the server up to my net, and I have Debian GNU/Linux (stable branch) installed. It's a sweet little server.

    steveha

    --
    lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
  2. Err no. by Space+cowboy · · Score: 4, Informative

    So, you can get a 300 MB drive, put it on a 17cm (7.5" :-) board and get something about half the volume of the "cube" for almost certainly less cost. And it still runs Linux, and it has all those 386 RPM's that you can install.

    If you really must have a cube form-factor, there are cuboid cases around the same size at www.mini-itx.com

    Simon

    --
    Physicists get Hadrons!
  3. Nano-ITX by Bushcat · · Score: 4, Informative
    If Qube hacking is simply a quest to get a small but useful computer into a pretty case, then Via announced its Eden-N processor last month, dissipating 7W at 1GHz and 4W at 533MHz. Samples shipping now, so I assume a Nano-ATX board will be available soon.

    The 866BASE gets a P3, 2 ethernet ports, and the usual interfaces on a 91mm x 96mm board.

    Plenty of opportunities for packing a nice computer into a small case.