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Mobo for Vertically Challenged Devices
An anonymous reader writes "VIA is shipping an ultra-low profile mini-ITX mainboard suitable for flat TVs, LCD-panel computers, and other vertically challenged devices. The Epia MS uses a minimalistic I/O backplate and SODIMM memory for a slimmer form-factor, and is VIA's first mini-ITX board available with a fanless 1GHz Eden embedded processor. The board has several processor options, but they all include the PadLock Ace hardware RNG and AES encrypt/decrypt features that are now supported by the Linux and BSD kernels."
now we can install computers in the most ungodly places!
Theres plenty of room in a flat screen TV if you place the card verticly, am I missing something??
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. -Aldous Huxley
There are a few new words I see popping up that I find entirely disagreeable, such as blog, mebi, gibi, etc. But mobo I can handle.
For a board that concentrates on being thin, I find it surprising that that dimension isn't listed. It's not on Via's product listing for this board and it's not in the user's manual (pdf).
Visually, i'm guessing that it is thicker than the 0.75" base of my PowerBook, but I'd like to know the real size...
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Aren't flat TVs depth challenged rather then vertically challenged? Unless of course you lay it on the ground and stand over it to watch it.....
It's so nice to see that you finally quit referring to them as "midget" devices and went with the much more PC "vertically challenged" devices.
Now we can finally build our own WiFi Surfboards!!! Apart from the crazy ones, mobos like this will probably open up a whole slew of new uses.
Help a college student
This would be an excellent board for a quiet mini-system. Toss in something like a thumb drive or whatever and it would stay quiet. BTW Toms hardware said they will sell for around $180 too, which is pretty reasonable.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
To a linux-y iMac? IE a very small, compact all in one computer that runs linux? Could make some serious inroads for linux on the desktop. A think the appeal of the iMac lies in that it is small, easy to hook up(no rats nest), and has astehtic value.
Making a cheap version of this could definatly have market potential(esp. since you can control the hardware, it makes plug and play linux even easier)
i love the small, quiet, cool boards, but why cant anyone make an EPIA board with two network interfaces? VIA, are you listening?
Is it just me, or wouldn't Vertically challanged tend to mean something that has a hard time standing up, or something that is horizontal most of the time? Seems like flat panel monitors and the like are horizontally challanged, if anything.
"Vertically Challenged"
I'm a dwarf you insensitive clod!
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# Modus Ponens
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So this is a laptop mobo without the lap?
oh, you can put it sideways (as if the electrons would fall out)?
So it's a lap-side?
Am I missing something here?
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
Home users want the kind of power that will decode an Mpeg-4 stream smoothly.
Some of us want enough power to decode MP3s.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Aren't flat-panel monitors and TVs *horizontally* challenged?
The CPU is barely equivalent to a Celeron 600, the video quality (s-video) is quite low, the control panel (Windows, sorry) for the surround sound is brain-damaged, and the tiny fan is much noiser than one would expect.
That board does not come with any sort of hardware monitor app, and I had to replace the CPU fan with a larger, slower one to cut down the noise to the originally promised "whisper" level.
Not a bad board, but if fails to meet any of the expectations it sets in its specs. Make sure to read the hardware reviews, and buy from a seller with a money-back guarantee.
Sounds like a good fit for a lot of security-related applications--rackmount DMZ servers, firewalls, central controller for various physical security devices (biometrics controlling electronic locks on doors, etc.) I knew that the hardware RNG and AES-encrypt/decrypt functions were supported by OpenBSD a while ago (don't ask me when...I think by the time 3.4 came around. Confirmation?) It's no small feat to have them in other kernels, and bodes well for OSS applications. I'd assume it's also low-power due to the small form factor, which is another plus. Can't check the article, as my manager's about to breathe down my neck. :)
While there are indeed fanless mini-ITX systems, this ain't one of them.
You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
What with the aes padlock
From VIA:
PadLock ACE provides world-class performance for the US government approved Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), performing cryptographic functions for securing e-mails, personal files, online transactions, and networks, including the latest high-bandwidth 802.11g wireless networks. PadLock ACE encrypts at rates of up to 12.5 Gigabits per second (Gbps) with a 1GHz VIA C3 processor, more than eight times faster than the best software AES implementation from a power hungry 3GHz Intel® Pentium® 4 processor based system that encrypts at a rate of a mere 1.5 Gbps.
does the chip have a FPU?
Of course. It also has SSE instruction compatability and a 16 stage pipeline.
Via needs to get rid of all onboard connectors and replace them all with handy-dandy pinouts on the mainboard instead. Would make for some WAY easier modifications, as you can mount the connectors wherever the hell you want them and then wire them to the mainboard, instead of trying to force the mainboard into some awkward angle just so you can plug in the mouse and keyboard...
Hate me!
According to the pictures on Linuxdevices.com this board is neither specially thin (why make only one row of I/Os on the backplate if the power connector and CPU cooler are thicker?) nor fanless (apart from the fact that a fan needs room above it as well!)
I wish they'd gone with the CN400 northbridge instead... oh well maybe for the Epia MS II =)
e.
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But ... that heatsink it quite large, they might as well have put all the interfaces on the back panel!
Maybe it they removed the PCI slot and put some of the other interfaces along that side of the board they could truly make it an expandable thin system? Also if they upgraded to the CN400 chipset in addition...
* reasonably happy owner of a VIA Epia800 - mainly because I got it 20 months ago and it hasn't depreciated one bit since *
Has someone really proven that the apparent quantum randomness is really random?
-Mike
It may come as a surprise to some, but there's quite a lot of interest in very small and very quiet PCs. Just check out this site as a for instance. And there's also this review on Tom's Hardware site.
They take less power, and there already exists a (several in fact) DC-DC converter for them. It's a daughterboard/PSU that clips right on the mobo's atx connector, and takes 12VDC in. Ie; wire it right up to your car, or the 12V line of another PSU (ie embed another computer in an open drive bay), or a wall-wart, etc.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
See either chapter 2 of the manual or the paragraph below the second photo of the motherboard on the Linuxdevices article: The Epia MS is the first VIA mainboard available with the fanless 1GHz VIA Eden ESP processor announced last February. The board is also available with a fanless 800MHz VIA Eden ESP processor, or with a "fansink" equipped 1.2GHz VIA C3.
IE a very small, compact all in one computer that runs linux?
and it doesn't run on linux either
Great idea, but I'd want to see some serious validation of the claim that their RNG is 'quantum' based.
In fact, looking at the report on the RNG operation (Paid for by Via) here's how it works:
http://www.via.com.tw/en/viac3/via_c3_padlock_eval uation.pdf "3.1. Entropy Source
The RNG hardware comprises two parts: a raw-bit generator that serves as an entropy
source and digital post-processing circuitry. The raw-bit generator produces somewhat
random bits which the design assumes will have imperfect statistical properties. The
post-processing circuitry then uses .whitening. and bit discarding to improve the
statistical properties of the imperfect random bits. .... "
The paper concludes that the VIA RNG is well suited, but says *nothing* about it's being 'quantum' based.
Sounds like some marketdroid really didn't talk to the engineering people before writing the ad copy for this puppy.
Linux is Linux, if One need clarify their dist: <Dist>/GNU Linux
bsds are of course just BSD
as normal PC components get smaller and cheaper, why not just let them use standard device? so that we can hook the digital tv to the internet, which will update its codec periodically in case there's something new out.
The first guy who will come out with a laptop-form factor chassis for those motherboards will make a killing, a bit like the "lunchbox" chassis of yesteryear.
We'll be able to crank-out custom laptops make to suit our desires without having to contend with proprietary crap which won't properly run [insert favourite non-proprietary open-source/subversive operating system]...
I own several of the VIA boards ( M10000's in particular ) and this doesn't seem to be any smaller than what I've already got. The size of the heatsink and fan in the pictures seems to make it about he same height as any of the other motherboards. It looks even a little bigger if you consider you've now got a separate SODIMM socket on the bottom for the memory. It looks like if you just went with a regular memory socket on the top, it'd still be shorter than that huge chunk of aluminum.
I also don't understand the "minimalist backpanel" with only a VGA, Ethernet, and cardbus connectors. Everything else ( all the usual suspects - audio, USB, TV-out, etc ) are headers on the motherboard. I'd be much happier if they made -everything- use sockets or pin headers on the motherboard. This way you could mount the motherboard and sockets separately any way you wanted, without having to have access to the edge of the board. I ran into this problem with one of my projects where I was trying to mount a motherboard flat in the bottom of a toolbox. The motherboard fit fine, but I didn't have room to plug the cables into the motherboard backpanel. This was an unusual project that is trying to be as small and unobtrusive as possible and keep all cables hidden inside the case, which is a tupperware type storage container. I would have loved to be able to plug all of them directly into the top of the motherboard. As it is, I had to mount the motherboard on edge with the backpanel facing up, because that was the only way I could get the room to plug the cables in ( VGA, USB and network ). Made the whole thing a lot bigger than it had to be.
Anybody have any experience using the VIA EPIA boards for DVD and video playback? I'm specifically interested in the MII 12000 for creating a MythTV box. I was also thinking MicroATX, but Pentium 4's and Athlon XPs run hotter and draw more power than the C3. I'd like to keep the power supply and CPU Fan and as quiet as possible.
Extreme Tech was decidedly underwhelmed by the M10000 while mini-itx.com seems to think is fine. The mini-itx review seemed a little hand-wavy though.
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RTFA, there is a version that doesn't need a fan, the 800 Mhz one, you only need a fan if you get the 1.2 Ghz processor.
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Quantum Mechanism
The only truly random generator is a mechanism that detects quantum behavior at the sub-atomic level. This is because randomness is inherent in the behavior of sub-atomic particles.
A quantum based hardware generator is practical, with examples that have been used including:
The charge developed on a capacitor during a particular time period.
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It seems a bit daft that it still uses a vertical ATX power connecter, as once you have plugged it in, you will have the combined height of the plug and the curvature of the cable increasing the overall height.
Surely they could have come up with some means of side-mounting the ATX connector?
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
I think the more important question about this motherboard (rather than the RNG) is the Video Controller. You can live without a properly configured RNG, but given that the kernel support for the CLE266 that came with the earlier EPIA boards is still little more than token, I would suspect not much will be different here.
... you'll see what I'm talking about:6
The DRM support is non-existant, and the X drivers are always so old that they prevent you from using Gentoo. At least NVidia's graphics drivers work (because of the OSS adapter module), but the CLE266 ones are dreadful.
This has latest supported distros
http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=325#cle26
After owning the EPIA boards for 2 years, I've given up trying to get X to work with the VIA drivers, and gone back to console only or VESA X11 driver - which means movies are not really an option. Kinda pointless really isn't it ?
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