Via Launches a New Mini-ITX System

primesuspect writes "Coming in close to the 10th anniversary of the format and billed as a 'motherboard for digital home media DIY enthusiasts,' VIA have paired their Nano X2 1.4ghz dual-core CPU with their VX900 chipset to produce an intriguing addition to their mini-ITX lineup." Mini-ITX, to my pleasure, has never gone completely away: witness the (slow, but not stopped) flow of news at Mini-ITX.com.

Comments

Re:Linux support?

[jedidiah]

Unfortunately Best Buy kind of sucks for this sort of machine. Even when they did have the Revos, they tended to hide them so people didn't discover that you could compute with a $200 device rather than a $500 one or $1000 one.

Re:Excess ports

[LWATCDR]

A lot of ITX stuff is used in industry.
PS/2 KVMs are cheap and common as dirt. RS-232 can go much farther than USB and is also super common. Some machine tools still run DOS it is realtime and makes sense for some dedicated controllers and use the Centronics port to interface to hardware.

Imagine that you have a perfectly good $20,000 CNC machine that has a blown controller.... Nice to have a simple pop in replacement. It is all about the market you are in. You still see RS-232, PS/2, and VGA on server motherboards a lot for the same reason.

Actually the only thing I would rather see is the serial port be brought out to an internal header like the printer port is.
Here is a link to how to build your own IR receiver to use with LIRC http://www.lirc.org/receivers.html
And one for transmitters as well http://www.lirc.org/transmitters.html

Re:More SATA ports

[LWATCDR]

"good, cheap, low-power Mini-ITX"
Do you want it to come with a pony? Good and cheap are usually mutually exclusive when it comes to new hardware.
Here is one with 6 SATA ports http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182233 but it is $199 and comes with two NICs which is great for servers.
Or you can get this one for only $139 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131732
Also six ports but only a single NIC and probably uses more power but is also faster.

Re:Excess ports

[DesScorp]

You still see RS-232, PS/2, and VGA on server motherboards a lot for the same reason.

We just put in a bunch of new equipment for airline shared use situations. Almost all the peripherals... keyboard, card swipers, boarding pass readers, printers, etc... run on serial connections. Even after all these years, RS-232 is the go-to connection for stuff that has to be up 24/7.As the vendor put it "Hey, it's a clean technology, it works, and airlines will keep using it until someone comes up with something better". You could say the same thing about VGA and PS2 connections. Businesses don't like change when it comes to their gear.

Re:Not socketed

[Rockoon]

$85 AMD E-350 APU+MOBO, MINI ITX

So it looks like AMD offers comparable solutions. Intel probably not.