Mini-ITX Computing For Everyone 259
An anonymous reader writes "So you have decided that you want an ITX system. Whether it's just to look cool or because you need to reclaim the desk space. Most people wouldn't know where to start when creating their system. Fear no more because XYZComputing.com has created a step by step process on how they created their system. Based on an MII10000 and using a USB Pen to load up Puppy Linux. No details are omitted so if you are new to Mini-ITX and do not have a clue what you need or where to start then this would certainly be a good place to start."
Re:seems like a lot of work (Score:5, Informative)
Dying a slow death? (Score:5, Informative)
The Nano-ITX's were supposed to be the next big thing. The Nano boards would be around 4.5" square, with SATA...etc. From what I can remember, it sounded like a great little board. For the first year after they were announced Nano-ITXs were shown at the various tech trade shows. This year, I can't remember hearing about them at all.
It's been long enough without a Nano-itx release that I'm starting to think that Nano-itx boards are vaporware and taking with it the rest of the VIA epia line.
Re:wow (Score:1, Informative)
When mocking people for their spelling/grammatical errors it is best to double check yourself. You know what they say about people who live in glass houses...
Re:Easier process (Score:5, Informative)
Re:seems like a lot of work (Score:5, Informative)
I have one of these (MII12000 in fact) - idle draw is less than 20W - a dim bulb.
Power efficient, cool, quiet, small, but not very fast.
Pick the right tool for the job - in my case a PVR.
Re:Easier process (Score:5, Informative)
http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?14@33.9SkZ
(Why does
Re:Easier process (Score:4, Informative)
Or, get an HDTV, many/most have DVI and/or VGA inputs. Mine has both, and the Mini looks great in 720P HDTV.
But, you're right about the audio. It only does analog stereo output. You need a USB audio adapter to get Dolby Digital surround output.
Also, it would have a great HTPC, if Apple opened APIs for the MPEG2 acceleration hardware onboard. With that, it would be capable of HDTV video playback. Without that acceleration, it's not fast enough to keep up with 1080i video.
Budget Breakdown (Score:5, Informative)
$220 ITX mobo, 1Ghz VIA C3 processor
$139 Silverstone case
$95 OCZ 512Mb DDR RAM
$45 Flash Voyager 512Mb pen drive
---
$499 Total
Note the project breakdown as listed in the article does not include a hard drive, optical drive, monitor, kbd, mouse, etc. Just the CPU.
That is fuxxing insane. Mac Minis start at $499, come assembled, includes a 1.25Ghz G4 processor, optical drive (CD-R/DVD-ROM), 512Mb RAM, internal modem, and a 40Gb hard drive with OS X and iLife software preinstalled.
Either the ITX project builder is goddam insane for building such a ridiculously expensive, low spec machine, or Apple is goddam insane for selling such a powerful machine for almost nothing. Or both.
nano-ITX (Score:5, Informative)
Silverstone says they are retooling to make new LC08 (and LC07) cases to accomodate the nano-ITX board, and I'm waiting impatiently. Sadly, what was originally to be a fanless design won't be anymore, with Silverstone's new case: Via didn't like Silverstone's heat pipe instead of a fan, and nixed the idea for the retooled case, not giving it the "nano-ITX" moniker blessing if it didn't support a fan.
Why not just use a mini-ITX?
Two words: CN400 and VT1625.
The CN400 is an HDTV resolution equivalent to the old CLE266 MPEG2 decoder chip, and the VT1625 is an HDTV resolution RGB to YPbPr (i.e. component) encoder.
MythTV with hardware-assisted HDTV MPEG2 decoding on a fanless thin clint would have been 'da bomb'! (Well, O.K. "fanless" is starting to become a matter of opinion and "do I dare not hook it up and hack a heatpipe?", but still.)
There are miniITX boards with the CN400 (Commell makes one), and there are fanless mini-ITX solutions (Hush PC makes one, heatpipe-based, but alas it won't accomodate the Commell board, and is as expensive as it is good looking), but the two sets don't yet intersect, which is why I was pinning my hopes on the nano-ITX board.
There are already patches to CLE266 and VT1623 drivers to accomodate the CN400 and VT1625, so Myth on the thing looks like a slam-dunk.
I've already got the nano-ITX board, and an (early, and therefore useless) LC08 case, so, despite the fan issue, I'm likely to go ahead and build the thing (nano-ITX, 512MB RAM, trayless DVD-ROM, hard drive/flash disk), anyway, having spent $400 for the nano-ITX board, $175 for the DVD-ROM, and whatever the RAM cost (I had a spare drive) once I get an updated LC-08 case.
Re:Easier process (Score:5, Informative)
I was really looking forward to running my home servers on Mini-ITX boards. Then the Mini came out and almost every enticing feature of the Mini-ITX platform (for home use) was instantly overshadowed.
Power Tie, at 10W-20W for the entire system.
The other power The C3 Nehemiah is decent at integer math for its clock speed and power usage, but sucks at floating point. Google some benchmarks for more information. For a server, that's generally not a terrible problem, but it makes the Mini more flexible in the ways it can be used.
Price I can get a new mini at under $500 shipped direct from Apple, with a hard drive, CD-burner, memory, case, latest commercial software. Good Mini-ITX cases cost well over $100 just because the market is small. A recent Mini-ITX board is $200-$300. No, don't use the price of an original Epia, which can't hold a candle to a Celeron 400, not to mention a 1.25GHz G4. Don't use the price of a full-size cheapo ATX case, cause that's not a fair comparison. Then add storage, RAM, etc. Even after spending all that (easily $500-$700 for a system that can even attempt to rival a low-end Mini in terms of performance), you don't get...
Support Apple has legendary customer support (look at, say, Consumer Reports and their customer support comparisons). Via might not be terrible, but they'll only help you with the mainboard, not the components, nor integration.
Linux I haven't checked in the last few months, but I'd wager that the Mini has better Linux support for its embedded hardware overall. EPIA drivers have a history of being shakey. See also the stability problems below, if you're thinking of going with an older, cheaper board. I loaded Debian-PPC on my Mini and everything just worked. Granted I don't use Airport Express (which as far as I know still doesn't work) and the Mac's onboard hardware monitoring chip isn't easy to configure with lm-sensors, but nothing that I really needed required special drivers.
Tinkering If you insist on building things yourself, then the Epia wins here. Keep in mind, however, that you can open a Mini and make minor changes (like adding RAM) without voiding your warranty.
Expansion Be careful if you think the Epia wins here. Some boards claim to support up to 2 PCI cards, but they are plagued with DMA problems. Notice that the newest Epia SP has dropped claims of such support. The problem crops up while sending large amounts of traffic to a hard drive and PCI card at the same time, or Ethernet port and hard drive, etc. and it will tank the machine. This is a known problem apparently resulting from a slow interconnect between the North and South bridges. Via's official forums (www.viaarena.com) has threads about this issue. To be fair, the CN400 chipset has a much faster interconnect, so problems might be alleviated. As for the Mini, most peripherals and add-ons will support one or more of USB and Firewire, so there's not a big problem. Video capture may or may not be a problem (are there Linux-friendly Firewire video capture devices?), since I haven't looked into that at all.
Apple stickers Bundled with the Mini! =P
The Epia is often used to build car-puters, whereas I haven't yet heard of something using a Mini for that purpose. If you have a particular PCI card you must use, that might be a reason to go Epia. Aside from those reasons, the Mini is a better deal and probably more capable.
Re:Easier process (Score:5, Informative)
I haven't been tracking this use, but I've seen several forum posts and several web sites around puting a Mac mini into cars. Heck, just put "Mac mini auto" into Google and you'll find a few of them. There are at least two companies offering add-ons, one sells a dock to put the computer in and pull it, and another is a DC power supply rather than using an AC inverter then the power brick.
Re:If you must have x86 (Score:3, Informative)
Not on a Mini!
I've tried VPC on my iBook (1.2GHz, same specs as a Mini) and it's just horrible, an abomination. On a fast Mac, you're good to go, but never a Mini.
Re:No details emitted (Score:4, Informative)
Oh dear, that's all the world needs, for Slashdot to be mistaken for a grammar and usage guide.
"...at least highlight or otherwise indicate the words which are wrong."The way to do this is with the word "sic" in parenthesis next to the misused or misspelled word. That's basically Latin for "Don't blame me, this is how I found it". Of course if they really did this wherever needed it would double the length of the front page.
Re:Easier process (Score:4, Informative)
Whilst it's probably not exactly what you were thinking of, there is always Team Banzai's [gobanzai.com] DARPA Grand Challenge entry, Dora, powered by three Mac Mini computers [slashdot.org]
Via & Linux - A Battle of Wills (Score:5, Informative)
I've used Debian as my primary OS, and the 2.6 kernel tree. Overall, everything seems to work quite well. The NIC has no problems of note. The soundcard was a snap. The I2C bus has been ignored, since I don't need any of it, but from what I read, there are (quite) a few problems with it's implementation & support under Linux. Their "padlock" features are for naught. Hardware random number gen has issues prior to (as best I can determine) 2.6.10, as in, "not bloody supported without a BIOS patch".
The main problem I have run into is with the graphics. Support for the unichrome graphics chipset is just plain AWFUL. Via claims "open source!", but all they have done is swipe the code from the OSS unichrome (reverse engineered) project, and incorporate it into a nightmarish install system which REQUIRES very specific versions of the kernel (both 2.6 and 2.4), running on very specific distros, Red Hat, Fedora, SuSE. There is *nothing* available as a raw tarball (at least nothing as far as I can tell). You must run VERY specific versions of X.org, and or XFree86, and these drivers are available ONLY as binary modules, more or less, the unichrome chipset is unsupported.
Defraying the cost (Score:1, Informative)
omac
Nano-ITX in-stock here (Score:3, Informative)
The fine folks at Damn Small Linux also have a Nano-ITX system. [damnsmalllinux.org] There are several versions of the machine at the bottom of this page. [damnsmalllinux.org]
Looks like I gotta stop calling it "Nano-ITX Forever"
Re:nano-ITX (Score:3, Informative)
Not only is it incorrect (Pb and Pr are not Blue and Red, but the difference between Y and Blue or Red), but also there is no reference mentioned. "better color detail". Better han what? Composite?
Here in Europe, every TV has one or more 21-pin SCART connectors. These provide at least audio and composite video, but usually also S-video and/or RGB inputs (when the TV has more than one SCART connector, they usually are not all RGB-enabled).
This RGB input is the most direct input, it is directly fed to the tube driving amplifiers via a switch matrix.
I understand that SCART is not used in the US, and that previous models of TV usually had only composite and maybe S-video inputs. Then YPbPr provides a better quality. But there is no quality difference compared to RGB.
For quite some time, any high-quality video source here in Europe (like digital receivers, DVD players and recorders, computers and games) used RGB output for the best picture quality.
Only the last year or two, there is a sudden appearance of YPbPr on this kind of equipment. But usually SCART with RGB is still provided.