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Via Debuts Smallest PC Mobo Format Yet
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Fri Jan 26, 2007 02:46 AM
from the angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin dept.
from the angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Via is readying a media-oriented motherboard in what could be the next popular size for small form-factor PCs: Pico-ITX. The 'Epia PX' board measures 3.9 x 2.8 inches and features a 1GHz C7 processor, along with rich audio/video I/O, albeit mostly on pin headers. Pico-ITX measures 3.9 x 2.8 inches (10 x 7.2 cm) — exactly half the surface area of Via's already small 4.7 x 4.7-inch (12 x 12cm) Nano-ITX standard, and considerably smaller than the original 6.7-inch square (17 x 17cm) mini-ITX standard."
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So small... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:It plays Fairplay (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:It plays Fairplay (Score:4, Insightful)
Because the iPod is a portable music player and the other things are x86 computers. They have said that the only portable music player which can play Fairplay music is the iPod. Just because you can use these things as portable music players, it is not their intended use, and they would not deal well with it.
The point is that these devices are not comparable to an iPod. They're a different class of device.
Parent
Still ATX power supply? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not design a single supply board? Preferrably wide-range input (say 8 - 28V) and be done with it? These boards don't need +/- 12V anyway, and +5V or +3.3V is already regulated down to core voltages.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
If these eventually get to the point where they are priced reasonably I could see getting one and sticking it in a cdrom bay, would make for a nice small internal server.
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Your idea about tucking a server in a CDROM is cool, but trips over the same power supply issue. Unless you plan on using a big-tower and build a Beowo
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Unless you plan on using a big-tower and build a Beowolf cluster of these ;-)
Actually... I was just thinking that maybe 10 of these together would be the size of my laptop. And my laptop bag has the extra space. And that since they've got mini-pci slots, they get wireless networking, and I would only need to supply power. And these can't take much of that. I usually plug my laptop in, anyway. But then, I would have a 10x1GHz superlaptop. For the price of two laptops (not counting the original).
Re:Still ATX power supply? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Still ATX power supply? (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly.
Lookout for pico PSUs if you want something small.
This one is DC-DC and takes up barely more space than the atx connector itself.
http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl/it.A/id.417/.f?sc=8&
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Still ATX power supply? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.mini-box.com/PicoPSU-120-WI-32V [mini-box.com]
The picoPSU-120-WI-32 is the smallest snap-in 12-32V ATX dc-dc power supply. The picoPSU is compatible with an entire range of mini-itx motherboards as well as regular boards. The picoPSU-1200-WI-32 provides a cool, silent 120 Watts peak of power for small PC designs
Via hw is excellent (Score:5, Informative)
I'll never buy Via again, no matter how small they make their boards. It's a crying shame because, really, their hardware is just gorgeous.
Re:Via hw is excellent (Score:5, Informative)
I wish they did. For a high-tech project, we decided on embedding VIA Mini-ITX motherboards. The one we picked (pressured for lowest COGS) had a C3 and a VT8235 south bridge. We ran into very weird USB and PCI communication problems, and spent almost a man year in total on trying to fix our software. It turns out that the south bridge is the problem. On the VIA Arena forums, this turned out to be a known problem (google for "VT8235 lockup"), mostly apparent when generating heavy network traffic. The "driver fixes" for Windows turn out just to throttle the network traffic.
Officially, our VIA representative still hasn't acknowlegded this problem, and we were ready to switch to a different, more "industrial" mobo. We still picked a VIA one though (with a C7 and a 8237) because frankly, their prices are hard to beat.
If you are considering a VIA mobo for an embedded application, make sure you test, test, test and don't automatically blame the SW guys when you find something weird. Don't let the fact that this is "consumer electronics" fool you. We figured that this meant cheap, well-tested, large series hardware with ppm failure rates. Apparently, that's not always the case.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
and
We still picked a VIA one though (with a C7 and a 8237) because frankly, their prices are hard to beat.
Are mutually exclusive in my book, unless you are talking about a large volume of machines (~50+ something well beyond one or two).
Personally, I've been interested in getting a small computer for years, but I can't justify the price/performance + my time factor, so I just havn't bothered. W
Bus lockups galore with Via (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, their hardware is crap too, when pushed.
I had to stop buying Via too after all three of my Via-based boxes glitched in different ways. The worst problem was terminal bus lockups on doing anything even mildly intensive with 2D graphics. And no, they were all different models of motherboard, so it's not just one rogue product.
I get the impression that Via hardware designers simply don't understand adhering to bus specs and defensive design. Their hardware is cute
Re: (Score:2)
I must be doing something wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Next stop... (Score:3, Funny)
And what's worse, your computer will be small enough to swallow, while the power supply will require a forklift to move it around.
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I don't hate the foo. I PITX the foo.
Vapourware (Score:5, Interesting)
If you are building OEM devices, they may sell to you - but there are other alternatives out there for mass production besides VIA.
And to second another poster - there are always problems with the drivers. If they were building the same quality in a more conventional marketplace (ie desktop) people would put them in the same marketspace as many of the original 'all in one' boards and avoid them in droves.
VIA - if you are serious - show it. If not just go blow away.
I really hope... (Score:2)
RAM?? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
The 256k of cache ought to be enough for anybody.
KFG
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
is what is reported on mini-itx.com
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Where does the ram go? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Perhaps mounted underside?
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vaporware (Score:2)
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http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl/sc.8/category.83/.
Sounds like a (winding) upgrade path (Score:3, Informative)
Pico-ITX? Oblig SNL skit. (Score:3, Funny)
Lets go Retro! (Score:3, Interesting)
Heck, why not just stick on an Atari 800 & C64 emulators too. You could even go really mad and well, use it as a PC with Open Office etc.
Re:Lets go Retro! (Score:4, Interesting)
That was using a MiniITX board.
Parent
Still not impressed (Score:5, Interesting)
1: Low Performance
Even the 1.5 GHZ VIA Cores perform badly, only a nudge faster than a P3. there are other options, such as the pentium boards (see point 2) and an AMD socket 754 board (Why 754? , why not AMD2, even 939 just so we can use dual core!)
2: Price
These things cost a silly amount, here in the UK its about £90 entry for the pathetic 500mhz boards, and about £150 for a 1.5GHZ via. or you can pay £150 for a intel board, but still need to buy a proccessor
And the nano ITX, well now those are ugly, for the cost of one of those i can get an xbox360...
Re:Still not impressed (Score:5, Informative)
May not be quite the same thing, but you can get a Jetway 1.5GHz C7D (http://linitx.com/product_info.php?cPath=12_138&
It's no speed demon, takes just over twice as long to encode an ogg as my 2GHz P4 for example, and even with the openchrome drivers under Linux, window redraws etc are dog slow. Plays video fine though, and 3D graphics appear to work.
It's pretty usable as a desktop - gnome, openoffice all work OK, and the only really noticable thing is when you draw a window you get a trail as mentioned above.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Some HW on that board has decent open source drivers and for the rest VIA doesn't care much.
Most prominent example is unichrome driver. It has "open source" version, but it is very incomplete as poor bastard who did it had to work without VIA's support.
They claim that you can get the datasheets etc, but in reality I have asked them several times and never got an response.
So, with Linux you can't utilize even what meager HW you have onboa
Re: (Score:2)
I think the price is a good thing though, it keeps the price-shoppers away from this garbage.
Why the analog video output? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why the analog video output? (Score:5, Insightful)
I know of many people who still use CRT. I still use CRT. CRT is where it's at as far as peformance, versaltility, sharpness, and clarity. On my old sony 20seII s, I can do 720p or 1080p if I wanted, and these are 10+ year old monitors. LCDs are stuck at a set resolution. Many plasma TVs do come stock with VGA connectors. For 20 inches and above CRTs actually seem to cost more. While "old" it's more than adquate for it's purpose, unless you are talking LCD which does benifit from a digital signal.
Aside from that, you are probally right, a DVI port can at least be adapted to VGA. If you are going to have one port, might as well be DVI.
Parent
Overkill... (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason people use micro-ATX systems is because they can still use (at least one of) their regular PCI cards in it. Without that, you could just as well load up any really tiny, oddball embedded system that has video-outs.
The size of a PCI card, perpendicular to a motherboard, will continue to constrain the minimum case size. Until some company gets the bright idea to bring risers back from the dead.
I can't help but wonder why 1U and 2U rack server designs haven't been repurposed into cheap, consumer-level DVRs.
Finally you can tell Microsoft where to stick it (Score:2)
Devil is in the details (Score:2)
They're just moving the problem to somewhere else.
Tom
Absurdly overpriced, buy an old laptop (Score:2)
Via's History (Score:3, Insightful)
If this isn't released to OEMs only I'd be surprised if mere mortals such as you and I will be able to purchase this anytime before 2009. Seriously.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Do they mean that it will have hardware to encode and decode to offload from the main cpu? Of course not.
Sorry, marketing buzzword alarm went off.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)