The Mini-ITX Project Revisited

An anonymous reader writes "From the article: "Once my original Mini-ITX project was completed I finally had a chance to sit back and use the computer. After a couple weeks of general internet browsing, emailing, and so forth, I was able to get a better understanding of the system and a feel for its design. Knowing how simple my needs were, the Mini-ITX project computer was orginally designed to be as basic and quiet as possible. This meant no hard drive, no extra accessories- just a stripped down system. While this suited my needs well at the time, its lack of versatility soon became an issue. This meant it was back to the drawing board for a retooling of the Mini-ITX project computer. The changes include a new case, operating system and boot device, along with improved cooling. The new system was tested using Slax and then MEPISLite." Even better link is the site itself which regularly carries mods.

Comments

slashdot SPAM!

[BLAG-blast]

This is just spam. Some how somebody tricked the /. editors (I imagine it's not hard) to link to a page full of advertising links.

Lame.

Buy a MAC-Mini, call it good!

[ankarbass]

Seriously, until mini-itx motherboards come down in price there doesn't seem to be any advantage, imnsho, over a MAC-Mini. Factor in the time you spend dorking around with the miniitx and it gets worse. Oh, and just about every case I've seen is just plain ugly. Modded cases are like ringtones, even if you think yours is an exception, it isn't, they all suck.

seems like a lot of work...

[User 956]

when you can just buy a Shuttle or some other small form factor pc mostly put together already.

Epia Stability

[dozer]

I can only speak for the M10000. Mine has been up since powered on, serving files and mail under moderate load. 458 days uptime and counting. The only stability issue I know of for this motherboard is it locks up under extended DMA (i.e. simultaneously record & playback for 1/2 hour in MythTV). Apparently there's finally a a fix for this. The tiny power draw is just fantastic; low power bills and it stays up for hours even on my crappy UPS.

I'm installing one with a DC-DC converter in my car this week. It looks high quality. We'll see...

Re:Nano-ITX

[xtal]

They exist, but there are mad cooling problems that haven't been solved completely yet. My understanding is "real soon now"..

They're not all that much smaller actually. The big one is that they integrated the DC/DC converter, so you just need to run 12V into the board. That's a big problem with mini-ITX if you want to put it in a small box.

the power supply on the Mac mini is external..

[YesIAmAScript]

There's no reason you couldn't take a automotive-spec power supply and attach it to the mini. Now you won't have a broken mini.

It's just amazing to me that somone "in the business" would miss this.

Note to other posters below, yes, any Mac can be made to power up upon application of power. It's in the Energy Saver preferences panel, called "Restart automatically after a power failure."

I do wish the Mac mini had a Pentium-M in it instead of a G4. It'd be a lot faster than the current Mac mini or a VIA Mini-ITX system. But that doesn't mean I'm going to make up other shortcomings for the Mac mini.