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Mini-ITX Computing For Everyone
An anonymous reader writes "So you have decided that you want an ITX system. Whether it's just to look cool or because you need to reclaim the desk space. Most people wouldn't know where to start when creating their system. Fear no more because XYZComputing.com has created a step by step process on how they created their system. Based on an MII10000 and using a USB Pen to load up Puppy Linux. No details are omitted so if you are new to Mini-ITX and do not have a clue what you need or where to start then this would certainly be a good place to start."
It's a good thing, they might have had to notify the EPA.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
How will we read about it then? What happened, did they fall within the event horizon created by the over-abundance of pr0n data on the net?
-- Let him who is without spelling error ignite the first flame --
when you can just buy a Shuttle or some other small form factor pc mostly put together already.
Off Topic, but I find it hilarious that the first 6 comments all focus on the 'No details are emitted' phrase. And I was going to make a snide reference to it as well, but I'd prefer to be modded 'Off Topic' rather than 'Redundant', since at least I have something (slightly) useful to say.
HAH! I just wasted a second of your life making you read this, but I wasted a minute of mine thinking it up. DAMN.
I believe there's a typo in the summary. Obviously the submitter meant to say that it'd be a bad place for a beginner to start.
No, you're thinking of the article where no details were i-mitted.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
go to www.apple.com
click on Mac Mini
click "Buy".
I have messed around with the Mini-ITX's for a couple years. The Mini-ITX and the VIA C3 processors they use were way ahead of their time in low power/heat small sized computers. But, the Mac Mini did a big leap frog over the Mini-ITX boxes. It's smaller, cheaper, and faster than any of VIA's offerings - not to mention all the included software, and it looks better than any of the ITX options. If you must have x86, Mini-ITX is a good option. If not, save some headaches & pick up a Mac Mini.
VIA announced the Nano-ITX a LONG time ago, but have thus far failed to deliver anything.. The Nano-ITX might offer some interesting possibilities. But, at this point I think there is little chance of them actually shipping it.
I went through 2 via boards on linux before settling on an Nvidia board because I just couldn't get the damn things stable (to be fair, the soyo board was stable so long as I didn't plug anything into the pci slots).
The other thing I'd love to know is if it can do full screen, high res divx in linux, or if there's a mini itx case that can. I figure most of these boards aren't going to run an accelerated X, but I haven't done enough research yet.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
For my money, the mATX boards are a much better value. Cheaper, mainstream processor support, support for the usual PCI/PCIe/AGP peripherals means a more powerful, robust, upgradeable system. Plus, you can get cases that look like a piece of stereo equipment and can be unobtrusive in your living room.
IMHO, ITX is better suited for embedded systems, not a more general purpose computer. Unless you have a very specific, limited use (like a MythTV frontend), you'll almost always be better served getting an mATX-based system.
As with everything, YMMV.
From the last page of TFA:
With a few additions, like a hard drive and optical drive, a computer like this one could easily be a great work computer.
Not exactly a ringing endorsement....
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
We liked you better before ;)
The Nano-ITX's were supposed to be the next big thing. The Nano boards would be around 4.5" square, with SATA...etc. From what I can remember, it sounded like a great little board. For the first year after they were announced Nano-ITXs were shown at the various tech trade shows. This year, I can't remember hearing about them at all.
It's been long enough without a Nano-itx release that I'm starting to think that Nano-itx boards are vaporware and taking with it the rest of the VIA epia line.
I have an old Epia-m @933MHz that I tried to revive just yesterday. This is an old version of the Epia, I do think (and hope) the newer ones are better.
It took my 3 tries to get Windows up and running (correct steps are 1- update BIOS, 2- Install Windows, 3-Install drivers, 4- Windows Update a few times), while keeping your fingers crossed.
It hangs while lauching powerDVD and WinDVD, and VLC is too jerky to use (at 640x480x32@75)
I checked, it still costs 2 to 3 times more than a regular MATX board+proc, for about 1/2 to 1/4 the power. Plus, cases are VERY expensive if you want something that look nice, plus a low profile DVD reader/writer (check www.mini-itx.com).
It's kind of cool to have, and makes a nice conversation piece for all my nerd friends, but usage value is very low. I don't think I could make any kind of server of it. Maybe a router, a basic Windows Office PC, or a linux experimentation platform (but drivers are an issue).
It IS incredibly small, very silent, and does work.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
I was curious how much this whole project cost after seeing the price links for the ITX motherboard under the article. So I googled around for component prices, and after seeing the prices, I can see why the author didn't include his budget in the article.
$220 ITX mobo, 1Ghz VIA C3 processor
$139 Silverstone case
$95 OCZ 512Mb DDR RAM
$45 Flash Voyager 512Mb pen drive
---
$499 Total
Note the project breakdown as listed in the article does not include a hard drive, optical drive, monitor, kbd, mouse, etc. Just the CPU.
That is fuxxing insane. Mac Minis start at $499, come assembled, includes a 1.25Ghz G4 processor, optical drive (CD-R/DVD-ROM), 512Mb RAM, internal modem, and a 40Gb hard drive with OS X and iLife software preinstalled.
Either the ITX project builder is goddam insane for building such a ridiculously expensive, low spec machine, or Apple is goddam insane for selling such a powerful machine for almost nothing. Or both.
Silverstone says they are retooling to make new LC08 (and LC07) cases to accomodate the nano-ITX board, and I'm waiting impatiently. Sadly, what was originally to be a fanless design won't be anymore, with Silverstone's new case: Via didn't like Silverstone's heat pipe instead of a fan, and nixed the idea for the retooled case, not giving it the "nano-ITX" moniker blessing if it didn't support a fan.
Why not just use a mini-ITX?
Two words: CN400 and VT1625.
The CN400 is an HDTV resolution equivalent to the old CLE266 MPEG2 decoder chip, and the VT1625 is an HDTV resolution RGB to YPbPr (i.e. component) encoder.
MythTV with hardware-assisted HDTV MPEG2 decoding on a fanless thin clint would have been 'da bomb'! (Well, O.K. "fanless" is starting to become a matter of opinion and "do I dare not hook it up and hack a heatpipe?", but still.)
There are miniITX boards with the CN400 (Commell makes one), and there are fanless mini-ITX solutions (Hush PC makes one, heatpipe-based, but alas it won't accomodate the Commell board, and is as expensive as it is good looking), but the two sets don't yet intersect, which is why I was pinning my hopes on the nano-ITX board.
There are already patches to CLE266 and VT1623 drivers to accomodate the CN400 and VT1625, so Myth on the thing looks like a slam-dunk.
I've already got the nano-ITX board, and an (early, and therefore useless) LC08 case, so, despite the fan issue, I'm likely to go ahead and build the thing (nano-ITX, 512MB RAM, trayless DVD-ROM, hard drive/flash disk), anyway, having spent $400 for the nano-ITX board, $175 for the DVD-ROM, and whatever the RAM cost (I had a spare drive) once I get an updated LC-08 case.
You could've hired me.
This is a little off-topic, but the first dozen or so replies (emitted?) to this story made me wonder about the poor spelling in many Slashdot articles. We all know spellcheckers have been around forever, and it would seem to be a trivial task to fix errors in accepted stories. So what's going on? I have two theories:
1. The editors are shielding themselves from liability by not changing submitted stories in any fashion whatsoever. Similar to the way that comments are never deleted or modified, only moderated down.
2. They're deliberate troll-food. Slashdot seems to have more than its fair share of grammar/spelling Nazis, and the occasional error is an easy way to throw them a bone. Trolls are happiest trolling, and they generate hits just like the rest of us. I think sometimes that dupe stories are the same thing.
P.S. Since I mentioned the spelling/grammar Nazis, I'm sure you (you know who you are) are looking at this psot very carefully. The question is, did I really make an error or am I just demonstrating #2 above?
Yet another irritating site where random words in an article link to irrelevant ads and Web sites.
God no!
Not on a Mini!
I've tried VPC on my iBook (1.2GHz, same specs as a Mini) and it's just horrible, an abomination. On a fast Mac, you're good to go, but never a Mini.
Basically I spent a lot of money and ended up very disappointed. I wanted to create some kind of multimedia/streaming-box, capable of turning into a complete PVR for DVB-T oder DVB-S. The problem is: To have a smooth DivX - Playbay in any event you have to go for the 1GHz CPU at least. But even though the VIA EPIA platform is considered low-power, the CPU is cooled by this noisy 6000rpm spinning fan. Since the VIA EPIA platform is completely custom, it is very very difficult to replace this fan (and get another fan with appropriate cooling capabilities) or even cool this thing without a fan. Sure there are ways, but the point is that you're gonna spend much much more compared to a standard ATX oder microATX Board with a nice medium power CPU (Athlon XP, mobile Sempron) and an CPU Cooler with a low-spinning 80mm fan. The system turned out to be extremely hot (even with the stock fan), slow (sometimes smooth DivX playbay was not possible) too noisy to be a working solution. Linux was a problem, too, because the MPEG2 Accelerator Chip wasn't supported and DVD-Playbay was not possible because of this (the CPU alone is too slow for a smooth DVD playback). My 2 cents: If you don't really really need the form factor and want to build a nice PVR, go for a typical standard ATX system.
I also can't imagine that any of the clicks the advertisers get are legit. It's probably mostly accidental clicks as people are navigating around.
Of course, the best thing would be to encourage people to make their sites a little more user-friendly with more than a few words of text on each page. But barring that, some form of ad blocker that finds and kills these things would be a good idea. Maybe someone can write one for Firefox and Internet Explorer?
Best Buy can have you arrested
I finally registered after being an AC for years!"
Just think, if you'd only waited a little while longer you could have gotten that "one Millionth User" ID number.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Mini ITX pioneered the small form factors, quiet desktops, and Nano ITX was supposed to go a step further. But complete and assembled Mini ITX systems are shipped only by a few obscure vendors and expensive for their limited performance, and Nano ITX has been MIA since 2003.
Apple, meanwhile, has grabbed the small, quiet desktop market with the Mac Mini, which is a beautiful piece of hardware, but is a bit limited in terms of software (pretty much OS X, since Linux isn't all that well supported).
Let's hope that Apple will come out with a Mac Mini/86, and that other PC vendors will clone the concept quickly. 640k may not be all you need, but a quart-sized PC ought to be all you need.
I have had the opportunity over the last several months to work with the VIA Epia-M, and Epia-PD boards.
I've used Debian as my primary OS, and the 2.6 kernel tree. Overall, everything seems to work quite well. The NIC has no problems of note. The soundcard was a snap. The I2C bus has been ignored, since I don't need any of it, but from what I read, there are (quite) a few problems with it's implementation & support under Linux. Their "padlock" features are for naught. Hardware random number gen has issues prior to (as best I can determine) 2.6.10, as in, "not bloody supported without a BIOS patch".
The main problem I have run into is with the graphics. Support for the unichrome graphics chipset is just plain AWFUL. Via claims "open source!", but all they have done is swipe the code from the OSS unichrome (reverse engineered) project, and incorporate it into a nightmarish install system which REQUIRES very specific versions of the kernel (both 2.6 and 2.4), running on very specific distros, Red Hat, Fedora, SuSE. There is *nothing* available as a raw tarball (at least nothing as far as I can tell). You must run VERY specific versions of X.org, and or XFree86, and these drivers are available ONLY as binary modules, more or less, the unichrome chipset is unsupported.
The folks at mp3car.com claim to have Nano-ITX motherboards in-stock. They also sell a complete system in a spiffy blue case.
...
The fine folks at Damn Small Linux also have a Nano-ITX system. There are several versions of the machine at the bottom of this page.
Looks like I gotta stop calling it "Nano-ITX Forever"