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: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