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A Motherboard That Doesn't Require An OS
An anonymous reader submits a link to this review of "motherboard that allows access to your multimedia devices via a special BIOS. No operating system required! Good for a home entertainment PC I guess." The review says that it will come bundled with a TV tuner card, too.
This Tom's HW Article talks about the MSI MiniPC that does the same thing.
Makes me wish I'd held off on buying my Shuttle.
Macintoshes have been able to play Pong in BIOS for years. This is nothing particularly novel.
Now we have bloatware in the HARDWARE too!!!!
no, that's software. even the current BIOS is still low level software. it's only hardware when you go down to block level/ component level.
Boy, are you going to get a lot of responses to that question.
No, BIOS stands for "Basic Input/Output System." That's right, Neal Stephenson got it wrong in Snow Crash. BIOS is one of many ways for a computer to organize its input and output devices so that it can be accessed by a proper operating system. I'm sure there are plenty of geeks here who can tell you more about it than me.
Apple and Sun don't use IBM style PC BIOS. They use OpenFirmware. Iduno what the other kids use.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Soyo SY-P4VAL Version M Multimedia Ready Motherboard
Model: SY-P4VAL
Manufacturer: Soyo
Provider: Soyo
Reviewed By: Miguel
Review Date:
Page 1
Board Layout & Features
This is not meant to be an enthusiast board so there's no cool colored PCB. In fact, at first glance, it looks just like any other motherboard. It's what it offers that sets it apart from all the rest. The board is almost identical to Soyo's SY-P4VGA with the exception that it carries the Whizpro BIOS utility instead of the AWARD BIOS and also includes the etBIOS "Instant On" feature. It is based on VIA's P4M266A/8235 chipset.
One nice feature is the support for both DDR and SDRAM memory modules. Being that the average user would likely use memory they have lying around to build an HTPC, it is certainly an excellent feature. Two slots support up to 2GB of DDR 200/266 and one slot supports up to 1GB of PC100/133 memory. That's plenty of memory power for its intended purpose. There's a warning label on the memory slots indicating that the power should be unplugged prior to installing your memory modules. On the other corner of the board, you'll find your IDE and floppy connectors. Up to four drives can be installed if desired.
The Soyo SY-P4VAL supports 533/400 FSB Pentium 4 processors. What? No 800FSB support? Yes, that's right, but considering that the board is not targeted at the mainstream enthusiast where performance is the absolute highest priority, it is quite clear why they chose this route. For its intended use, that's plenty of power. To satisfy those who do crave the extra power, the SY-P4VAL supports Pentium 4 processors up to 3.06GHz. There is plenty of space around the socket to install a larger heatsink if desired, however, being that the board would probably end up in a living room or den, the added noise is really not necessary.
The SY-P4VAL is an ATX motherboard and therefore, offers the standard 5 PCI slots. This motherboard comes with video onboard but they provide an AGP slot for those who wish to upgrade. The AGP slot has a flip type retention mechanism and has 2X and 4X support. The Northbridge is passively cooled with a standard size aluminum heatsink.
This board has just about every feature you can ask for with the exception of Firewire support. The I/O panel includes a VGA port, RJ45 LAN jack, four USB ports and your audio jacks including line in/out and mic jacks.
The only negative comment I'll make on the board's layout is the placement of the ATX connector. It is located behind the I/O panel and creates unnecessary cable clutter.
The BIOS
We will be looking at the BIOS in detail as the Soyo SY-P4VAL carries a rather unique yet user-friendly Whizpro BIOS that most will not be familiar with. Although a bit different than what I'm used to, I really like this well-structured BIOS utility.
One reason is the System Information Menu. It takes about 3 seconds to load but it gives you detailed information on your hardware as well as the BIOS ID and Revision information. There are two pages worth of information on your devices.
The General Configuration Menu allows you to define your boot order as well as enable/disable password protection. The Advanced Configuration Menu mainly allows you to define your POST details. There is even a "Quiet Boot" option that when enabled, will only show error messages (if any) during boot.
The etBIOS Configuration Menu is where you will define how the Version M BIOS (Instant on feature) will function. Being that this is the most impressive feature, we will look at it in great detail a bit later. Because of its intended use, there are no overclocking options but the System Specific Menu will allow you to tweak your memory a bit.
The Peripherals Menu mainly allows you to enable/disable any of the onboard devices such as your audio, lan and USB. What is missing is the option to disable the onboard video. This is odd, but we did no
http://www20.tomshardware.com/howto/20040227/index .html
It doesn't say that it includes the TV capability. However, audio functions work without any additional hardware at all out of the box. No HD, Processor, or memory required...
Interesting idea if you really want to save power. I'd rather fork over a few more cents per hour and have the capability to actually do something with the media though at a moments notice.
... this project!
Seriously folks, I don't mean to get embroiled in the issue of semantics, but there are all sorts of devices in which their OS is lightweight enough to reside in ROM. If the boot code never hands control of the system off to a secondary module (loaded from a disk, for example) how is it not the OS?
PS2, xbox, GC can all run software straight out of medias. This isn't that far fetched.
The intended audience for this is obviously the living-room entertainment machine sort of application. For instance, rather than have to wait while the OS loads, and then use some software-based UI just to play a CD, you just have to push the on-button, drop in your mp3 or audio CD and it'll automatically start playing within seconds - no having to turn on the TV to check things are ready/you've pushed a button on your remote keyboard at the wrong time etc.
If you want to play standard applications - just boot into your normal OS and fire up your divx player, stepmania etc. If you have replaced your home entertainment CD/mp3/DVD player with this and just want to access one of those functions in a UI that you haven't kludged together, with no OS wait/booting screens etc - no problem.
My only major request would be that it plays xvid/divx encoded avis in the BIOS environment as well - licence issues aside, I can easily foresee this being a great addition to one of those hushpc computers.
What does that mean? I know I have build a PVR myself (based on Linux), and I'm sure Tivo owners want their systems to have "TV-Tuner functionality".
It can do everything a Tivo can do, and much more.
You just try recording 720x480 TV stream to MPEG4 on a slow processor and you'll be in for a surprise.
It would be possible to hack ANY COMPUTER into using openFirmware (hypothetically).
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
And for those where only open source will do, check out OpenBIOS, a open implementation of OpenFirmware (IEEE 1275-1994). Note I believe that it is still a work in progress.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Here's google's cache of the same page. I know the site isn't completely slashdotted- as it runs fine at some moments, and VERY slow at others. As usual, google's cache is much more reliable.
that's pretty damn cool.
The problem with being a geek, is that you never run out of cool crap that you "have to" buy... they keep bringing cooler and cooler shit to market.
just when I thought I wanted a mini-itx mobo for my PVR project this comes along... oy vey!
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Also look at the page on performance and you will see them compare it to the MSI KM2M Combo-L. If you do a google search on those terms, the first link is their review of that board, which can take a "1GHz to 2600+ processor." On the performance page they benchmark the Soyo P4VAL (Projected price, $69 without tuner) with "Pentium 4 2.4GHz 533MHz" ($124) against the MSI KM2M ($54) with an unspecified CPU, but it does not have 333FSB support so it can't be more than an Athlon XP 2600+ 266MHz FSB ($77 - Actually the 333FSB model is $2 cheaper.) Hence, $193 for the soyo vs $131 for the MSI plus its most powerful CPU. The MSI does almost as well on the CPU benchmark (4391 vs 5810 PCMarks) and does much worse than the Soyo on memory (2400 vs 4844) and their conclusion for this page is "The Soyo P4VAL will have an MSRP of around $69 (without TV tuner, remote, etc, just the board), which is only about $13 more than the KM2M motherboard. It will obviously offer you much more in terms of features and performance and therefore, it's simply a better buy." So let me get this straight, a full size motherboard which, with the tested CPU will run you $63 more, being used for a purpose which does not require massive memory bandwidth, is a better buy? Yes it offers the goofy BIOS menu but that thing doesn't even seem to have SVCD support.
That's right, they don't bother to tell us if it supports nonstandard-bitrate VCD (known as XVCD) and if it doesn't support XVCD, SVCD, and XSVCD, I consider that to be an amazingly crippled featureset for a multimedia PC, one which will mandate the use of a real live hard-drive-installed (or net-booted, I guess) operating system. Neither their etbios page nor soyo's page for the board bother to tell you what types of media are played, but the review says "You have access to multi-media functions such as AUDIO/MP3 CD playback, VCD playback, DVD playback and TV Tuner support" which implies that that's all the functions. No MPEG4, for example, and no SVCD. This bios will only read media on CDs as far as I can tell from the review, so you can't play media off a hard drive, USB, memory stick, etc etc. In other words, it will do the things a $80 DVD player from Wal-Mart will do for you, but its output probably won't be as good (I don't see any component output on this baby, but my $80 Pana DVD-S35S is progressive scan, supports VCD, SVCD, XVCD, XSVCD, DVD, MP3, WMA, and JPEG.)
In fact, the reviewer couldn't even figure out how to get the TV feature to autoscan to select only good channels (a feature which might not even be present, for all anyone including soyo will tell us) but was impressed that there was an escape function to go back to the menu. Woop-de-doo!
All in all, this article is unprofessional crap, and the etbios is basically useless. The fact that it has funky bios means that it's likely to be a pain in the ass sometime down the road. This looks like a product looking for a purpose. Were it done right, with access to filesystems not on optical media, and support for additional codecs in some format, it would be interesting, but this product is as goofy as the review.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Get a modern motherboard then. With my Asus A7n8x deluxe I just reboot, hit a key sequence (alt-F4 or something like that) and it starts the awdflash program stored in rom (or an eeprom or somewhere) and prompts me to put in a disk with the image to flash. Very simple, no boot disks needed.
My new MSI motherboard is even simpler.. it has a live update Windows program that works just fine in Windows XP to flash the BIOS. No need to reboot to DOS first.
As for the person that said BIOS hasn't been improved in 10 years, that's a bunch of bull. My motherboards can now boot off of a CD rom device, a USB keyfob, or even the network via PXE. My top of the line motherboard circa 1996 didn't have any of those features. Hell, it didn't even have USB. It may not be a huge innovation, but it's certainly been improved.
The parent should read linuxbios.org.
A less elegant alternative would be to use one of the seveal multimedia oriented linux distributions. Geexbox is about 4 megs and intended to be included in the media containing the multimeida files.
Granted it takes more than 8 sec to boot but it has 0 cost and can be used on any moderately standard x86 hardware
Every chip is a "CPU?" Okay...
From Dictionary.com: central processing unit (n. Abbr. CPU ) The part of a computer that interprets and executes instructions. None of the chips I've mentioned interpret or execute instructions.
I think what most people around here want is something akin to the old Amiga Autoconfig system, plus a way to automate driver updates, and the whole shebang be platform independent.