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AMD Ships First DTX Form Factor Prototypes

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the size-matters dept.

MojoKid writes "When AMD first revealed their plans for the DTX open industry standard, the intent of that early briefing was to explain AMD's vision for interoperable small form factor systems. Today AMD provided more details and a specific design example of the DTX small form-factor standard. This HotHardware article showcases a prototype system built on a low power AMD Athlon 64 BE-2350 processor and 690G chipset motherboard with integrated graphics. Maybe the HTPC just took a small step toward platform standardization?"

2 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. Use laptops as a starting point by gelfling · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If you take the screen, battery, keyboard out of my Thinkpad what's left is 9"x7"x0.5". That's 229mm x175mm x13mm. That's just my rough estimate. If you took that form factor and put it in a case that you could open up w/o wrecking it you would have a great standard small formal machine. Mine has 2-USB, 1 S-video, 1-SVGA, 1-LPT, 2-PCCard, 1-DVD, 1-speaker out, 1-mic in, 1-Docking port.

    Seems to me that a no screen, no battery, no keyboard 'laptop' form factor in a case you can open combined with a planar you can add things to using the mini-PCI bus or just coupling it through a docking base would be the solution. In fact you could use a dumb coupling through the docking port via a flat cable and build all the expansion electronics and devices into the back of an outboard monitor. Basically you take the PC in the montor design and break it in two so that the basic PC is separate from the expansion bay in the monitor. Keyboard and mouse through a USB port or Bluetooth. With some work you could get the PC to be barely larger than it's own AC power adapter, sans drives.

  2. Re:Platform standardization? - Not likely. by houstonbofh · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Buy what you want and be happy. I, on the other hand, routinely build systems with 2-3 PCI cards. If you are doing video editing, or PC based DVR, PCI capture cards are the way to go. That is why we have more than one motherboard standard. You get what you want, and I get what I want. The point is that what does this new standard offern the ATX mATX and miniATX do not? Damn little from what I can see.