Everytime theres a discussion about highways we always have to bring Connecticut into it... Thats why we changed our state motto to "The Construction State"
I haven't had the opportunity to try looking glass, but being a Gentoo user, it is available in the portage tree. The only downside to installing it in Gentoo is that it requires the sun jdk 1.5.0 which is a masked package, and according to documentation behind installing it: "1.5 defaults to -target 1.5 making downgrading to a 1.4(/1.3) impossible" meaning that once you install 1.5.0, you can't go back to a more stable 1.4, which is something you wouldn't want to lose only because it works almost flawlessly in Gentoo.
If anyone actually read the download page for looking glass it notes the following bugs:
# Bad ATI-drivers # The 3D configuration scripts of GamesKnoppix will have to be completely rewritten, as at least on ATI cards they have no effect.
In other words, us ATI people (once again) will have difficulty getting 3d hardware support with the live cd running. I haven't been able to try the livecd out yet (still waiting for a tracker) but ill keep my fingers crossed.
The car is fitted with one monitor in the front and another in the rear seat area. Depending on the chosen mode, the front seat monitor can display up to four images at one time from seven different cameras mounted at the front, side and rear of the vehicle, giving the driver all-round visibility including blind spots. Simultaneously, the rear seat monitor can show DVD images.
Sounds like something between an Episode of Pimp My Ride and a James Bond's Aston Martin DB5.
I grabbed the last page before it got slashdotted if anyone wants a basic summary of what the review said:
The MB860 initially attracted me because it was the first Mini-ITX board to be based around the Transmeta Efficeon technology. Given that Transmeta's track record with performance isn't the best I was very much looking forward to testing the MB860. Now that I have worked with it for several weeks I can say the following: "I like it, but..."
One of the strong selling points is certainly that this board is fanless while offering good performance at very low-power consumption levels. It is quite impressive to see that the difference in total power consumption between idle (at ~18w) and full load (~30w) is very low. It's even more impressive if you realize that the CPU itself is only using a maximum of ~2w when playing a DVD. At the same time the temperature remains at an acceptable level while you are always sure that the system won't be damaged thanks to the thermal throttling. I think that the MB860 could be a great choice for CarPCs as these systems are especially sensitive as far as power consumption and heat are concerned.
Attention to details such as the 44-pin IDE header and the included 44-pin cable are nice touches. There are however also a couple of annoyances such as the non-standard power-LED pins and the location of the ATX connector. While the second point varies depending on what case and power supply is used I'd personally prefer to use existing components such as the handy plug-in PSUs from iTuner. The I/O area of the board could also use 2 (4 would be even better) additional USB2.0 ports. Additionally I'd love to see an S-Video connector as many people prefer this option. For the future a DVI instead of the slowly aging VGA connector would also be appreciated. Especially since the ATI M7 core seems to be quite capable of producing high quality output signals.
Software wise I can only complain about the M7 driver issue I'm having but as I said above that might be due to the fact that my sample is one of the first pre-production boards. In case I can come up with a solution I will update this article accordingly. As I didn't experience a single crash during my endless hours of testing and working on this system I'm lead to believe that the other drivers for the MB860 are very stable. One more thing which I'd like to see is a detailed documentation of the Observer tool and a better user-interface plus more option for this handy application.
Here's a point which I haven't mentioned so far. Price. According to Transmeta the board is said to retail at around $450 but from I'm hearing from IBASE the retail price is likely to be higher. IBASE has made it clear that the MB860 is mainly aimed at the industry/industrial markets and this price-tag will certainly keep most regular consumers from considering this board. This is quite a pity in my opinion since the MB860 offers many features that consumers would also appreciate.
In the end of each review the question always is: Is this product worth its money and should you consider spending your hard-earned cash on this product? For the regular reader here this will basically turn into the question whether a VIA EPIA board or the IBASE MB860 is the better choice for their system. Both boards have their strengths and weaknesses but I believe that there the EPIA boards offer two important advantages. Price being one of them as you can basically build a complete system for the price of the MB860. On the other hand the EPIAs have the advantage of being on the market for some time. Therefore you'll find more products (both hardware and software) and general support for this platform. This is certainly another point to consider. For the industrial market the MB860 certainly offers some compelling reasons to be purchased instead of an EPIA board. First of all industrial products normally have a higher reliability than consumer products. Given my own experience and hearing from other people I'd also suggest that the
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Is this supposed to be a surprise? Of course the Nintendo DS preorders are going to outsell the PS2! In Japan, the PS2 takes 80% of the market share. The only difference between the old PS2 and the new PS2 is that its smaller, weighs less, comes with integrated NIC/Modem and looks sleeker. On the other hand, The Nintendo DS is a completely new portable video game system that features technology never before offered by any other home console or hand-held game system. Again, I don't see what the big deal is here.
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Everytime theres a discussion about highways we always have to bring Connecticut into it... Thats why we changed our state motto to "The Construction State"
I haven't had the opportunity to try looking glass, but being a Gentoo user, it is available in the portage tree. The only downside to installing it in Gentoo is that it requires the sun jdk 1.5.0 which is a masked package, and according to documentation behind installing it: "1.5 defaults to -target 1.5 making downgrading to a 1.4(/1.3) impossible" meaning that once you install 1.5.0, you can't go back to a more stable 1.4, which is something you wouldn't want to lose only because it works almost flawlessly in Gentoo.
If anyone actually read the download page for looking glass it notes the following bugs:
# Bad ATI-drivers
# The 3D configuration scripts of GamesKnoppix will have to be completely rewritten, as at least on ATI cards they have no effect.
In other words, us ATI people (once again) will have difficulty getting 3d hardware support with the live cd running. I haven't been able to try the livecd out yet (still waiting for a tracker) but ill keep my fingers crossed.
Sounds like something between an Episode of Pimp My Ride and a James Bond's Aston Martin DB5.
But I think you forgot to hit the "Post Anonymously" button.
I grabbed the last page before it got slashdotted if anyone wants a basic summary of what the review said:
The MB860 initially attracted me because it was the first Mini-ITX board to be based around the Transmeta Efficeon technology. Given that Transmeta's track record with performance isn't the best I was very much looking forward to testing the MB860. Now that I have worked with it for several weeks I can say the following: "I like it, but..."
One of the strong selling points is certainly that this board is fanless while offering good performance at very low-power consumption levels. It is quite impressive to see that the difference in total power consumption between idle (at ~18w) and full load (~30w) is very low. It's even more impressive if you realize that the CPU itself is only using a maximum of ~2w when playing a DVD. At the same time the temperature remains at an acceptable level while you are always sure that the system won't be damaged thanks to the thermal throttling. I think that the MB860 could be a great choice for CarPCs as these systems are especially sensitive as far as power consumption and heat are concerned.
Attention to details such as the 44-pin IDE header and the included 44-pin cable are nice touches. There are however also a couple of annoyances such as the non-standard power-LED pins and the location of the ATX connector. While the second point varies depending on what case and power supply is used I'd personally prefer to use existing components such as the handy plug-in PSUs from iTuner. The I/O area of the board could also use 2 (4 would be even better) additional USB2.0 ports. Additionally I'd love to see an S-Video connector as many people prefer this option. For the future a DVI instead of the slowly aging VGA connector would also be appreciated. Especially since the ATI M7 core seems to be quite capable of producing high quality output signals.
Software wise I can only complain about the M7 driver issue I'm having but as I said above that might be due to the fact that my sample is one of the first pre-production boards. In case I can come up with a solution I will update this article accordingly. As I didn't experience a single crash during my endless hours of testing and working on this system I'm lead to believe that the other drivers for the MB860 are very stable.
One more thing which I'd like to see is a detailed documentation of the Observer tool and a better user-interface plus more option for this handy application.
Here's a point which I haven't mentioned so far. Price. According to Transmeta the board is said to retail at around $450 but from I'm hearing from IBASE the retail price is likely to be higher. IBASE has made it clear that the MB860 is mainly aimed at the industry/industrial markets and this price-tag will certainly keep most regular consumers from considering this board. This is quite a pity in my opinion since the MB860 offers many features that consumers would also appreciate.
In the end of each review the question always is: Is this product worth its money and should you consider spending your hard-earned cash on this product?
For the regular reader here this will basically turn into the question whether a VIA EPIA board or the IBASE MB860 is the better choice for their system. Both boards have their strengths and weaknesses but I believe that there the EPIA boards offer two important advantages. Price being one of them as you can basically build a complete system for the price of the MB860. On the other hand the EPIAs have the advantage of being on the market for some time. Therefore you'll find more products (both hardware and software) and general support for this platform. This is certainly another point to consider.
For the industrial market the MB860 certainly offers some compelling reasons to be purchased instead of an EPIA board. First of all industrial products normally have a higher reliability than consumer products. Given my own experience and hearing from other people I'd also suggest that the
Maybe im wrong but don't industrial type market businesses usually purchase big powerful industrial type computers to process their work?
What exactly are industrial businesses doing with these boards?
I can only see this item being sold on the consumer market.
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US
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+1.6503300100
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Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
DNS Admin
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Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View
CA
94043
US
dns-admin@google.com
+1.6503300100
Fax- +1.6506188571
Created on..............: 2004-Apr-26.
Expires on..............: 2006-Apr-26.
Record last updated on..: 2004-Apr-26 16:46:39.
Is this supposed to be a surprise? Of course the Nintendo DS preorders are going to outsell the PS2! In Japan, the PS2 takes 80% of the market share. The only difference between the old PS2 and the new PS2 is that its smaller, weighs less, comes with integrated NIC/Modem and looks sleeker. On the other hand, The Nintendo DS is a completely new portable video game system that features technology never before offered by any other home console or hand-held game system. Again, I don't see what the big deal is here.
I can see it now
2600 Autumn 2004 Edition
NEW MP3 Phone Box CENTERFOLD POSTER INSIDE!!!
(In case you didn't know 2600 (aka the Hacker's Quarterly obsesses about every type of telephone box))
As an airline pilot for American, its nice to see my job being outsourced by rats in the future.
20 years from now long after steam is extinct, how the hell am i supposted to play this game?