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Hardware

The Incredible Shrinking Motherboard 310

Posted by CmdrTaco from the its-so-cute dept.
DrGonzo was among several who submitted news of the new Mini Motherboard from via. The Mini ITX standard is just 170mm squared, and this motherboard has audio, ether, IDE, video and tv out. Not bad for something so tiny. Here's an article about the small wonder.
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The Incredible Shrinking Motherboard More

The Incredible Shrinking Motherboard

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  • I know I wouldn't mind having a dozen or so cheap Cappuccino-type knockoffs... building in quantity would probably make them a lot cheaper than the $300+ for an industrial SBC. In-dash MP3 player, anyone?

    • Re:Cheap book PCs? (Score:4, Informative)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 ) on Wednesday March 13, 2002 @02:23PM (#3158304) Homepage Journal
      Small doesn't always translate to cheap, as a matter of experience it's the opposite. You can get a lot of current mobos for <$100

      For more about form factors, here the definitive site. [formfactors.org]

      • They'll be relatively inexpensive. Retail for the whole shebang should be something on the order of about $300. They're gunning for set-top box territory with these, meaning that they have to be relatively inexpensive to begin with.
      • You can get a lot of current mobos for under $100

        Yes you can get a current mobo for $100, but this includes the processor, which on a standard mobo would be another $100, putting it's total cost at $200.

        I for one and looking to buy one as soon as they come out, perfect for a linux router/server if you ask me.

        • Re:Cheap book PCs? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Com2Kid ( 142006 )
          Dude, this includes Proccessor NIC and Video Card.

          Hell, for a $50 case + PS combo (ok likely A LOT more expensive for a limited market like this product) and a $30 wirelss Keyboard Mouse combo from A4Tech [a4tech.com] I would be set.

          Oooh yaaah.

          Hehe, it already comes with TV out too.

          INSANLY cool.

          I am thinking Digital VCR here folks. :) Especialy if you outfit it with some sort of hot swappable IDE Hard Drive system, LOL!

          Hehe, actualy with Flash Memory cards approuching (at as I recall) 1GigaByte now days, hmm, hehe! The MoBo has build in compatability with Flash Memory from what I can tell, LOL! Though some sort of internal mount USB unit could be used as well with a port for the Flash memory to fit into.

          Hehe!!!!! Digital VCR! MPEG4 video, w00t w00t! :)

          Man that would rock, though using Flash Memory would compleatly negate any sort of cost savings, LOL!

          Still be pretty nice to have a 120GB or so drive installed in this baby and use it to go around with your movie collection sitting in something that you can almost carry in a small backpack, LOL!

  • White Paper (Score:4, Informative)

    by the_radix ( 454343 ) on Wednesday March 13, 2002 @01:55PM (#3158048) Homepage Journal

    Also on Via's site, the white paper describing this small wonder:

    http://www.via.com.tw/en/VInternet/Mini-iTX.PDF [via.com.tw]

  • Uh, it's not that small (Score:5, Insightful)

    by apsmith ( 17989 ) on Wednesday March 13, 2002 @01:55PM (#3158050) Homepage
    It's not 170 mm^2 but 170 mm X 170 mm, which is 17 cm x 17 cm, or a square about 6.5 inches on a side. Why is it people see "mm" and think small? Anyway as the article says, there are smaller ones out there...
  • Autonomous, robotic, self-hiding matzoh for Passover.
  • It'll be nice to see if they stick this in teh SpaceWalker aluminum case - but I wonder why they only went up to 800MHz when the C3 goes to 933 (though I've had a tough time finding them)

    But this is one sweet little box - toss a second NIC in - instant firewall! Very cool.

    • Why? The SV-24 can already hold a motherboard that handles faster chips.

      Better would be an even smaller case, for people who don't need even the one PCI slot.
      • I wasn't saying put this into the SV-24, but into a case like it, but smalle r(my original post wasn't all that clear looking back) What would really be nice is a Spacewalker case about half as high and not as deep. Just deep enough for a floppy in front with HD sideways in back above this mobo and space for one PCI mounted in a riserboard sideways. Net install LInux and wheee!
    • This is a BGA mounted part, meaning no upgrading CPU (This is less of an isssue than you'd think...) and I think they may not have the 900+ parts in the BGA form factor yet.
      • Since '81 when I first started messing with PS's the only time I can think of when I upgraded a CPU was one of the early more effecent 8086 versions. I've downgraded a few because of fried CPUs for friends but in that case most of the box should have been thrown out.

        I figure its about time they start shipping the boards with 128mb of ram and maybe one socket to add more. That would work find for the application I have for this board.
  • Link to the Google cache [google.com] of this page.
  • I'm still waiting for a small (Micro ATX or smaller) mobo that will allow for a REAL chip (P4/Athlon), 512MB RAM, ATA 100 HD, CD, ethernet, USB, AND support for AGP graphics. I want this for portable gaming and haven't found the IDEAL board...yet! Still looking....any suggestions?
    • Shuttle are bringing out the successors to the sv24 - one for P4s and the other for Athlons. Not sure when they are actually appearing - but it will take them 6 months to appear in the UK anyway :(
    • Looking for a MicroATX mobo that does the above, along with a MicroATX case that doesn't have three inches of plastic sticking off the front.
    • Why do you need ATA-100 for gaming? Games don't access the hard drive all that much, unless you're low on RAM and your peecee is swapping memory. Current IDE HDD's can only sustain 40-50MB/sec transfer anyway, and even bursting I don't think they get close to 100mb/sec.

    • The Abit NV7m [abit-usa.com]. Based on nVidia's nForce chipset. Supports Athlon XP's. Up to 1 Gig of unregistered PC2100 DDR RAM. Built in audio (nVidia, but I'd add a nice GeForce 3 Ti 500), sound (which is actually very very good) and LAN. MicroATX form factor. Lowest price is about $130 on Pricewatch, which is damn good.

      In other words, you're stupid if you don't go this route. I'm planning on building a full-featured LAN box with one of these, and I'll be spending about $1500 to totally deck it out - and that'll be with a 15" flat panel monitor for hauling to LANs.

      See you at Quakecon.
  • Only one PCI slot makes it less interesting as a desktop motherboard, and it certainly is not meant as a server motherboard. It does, however, look promising in the appliance area.
    • Its got quite a bit of onboard I/O on it already. AGP video, sound and ethernet have been taken care of as has TV out. What would you use the PCI slot for other than maybe a modem or second NIC? This isn't meant to be a mainstream gaming machine or desktop box... However at the price they've quoted I'd bet it would work well as a portable MP3 box for the car or whatnot. It's ogt lot's of possibilities IMO. Maybe slap a wireless card in it and go wardriving with it? :-)

      P.s. Looks like one of the optional modules was a cable for a "2nd PCI device" so perhaps it's more flexible than you realized?

  • The site: (Score:5, Informative)

    by llamalicious ( 448215 ) on Wednesday March 13, 2002 @01:58PM (#3158088) Journal
    is coming down hard... (offer up temporary local mirrors for subscribers and I might bite, it'd also sit well with the people who get taken out from a /.ing)

    link to google's cached version [google.com]

    and the text from from theregus.com:

    VIA Technologies is expected to launch a very small format motherboard this month. Called the mini-ITX, the fully integrated mobo measures up at 170mm x170mm (yes, it's square), making 50 per cent smaller than the FlexATX form factor, VIA claims.

    The Mini-ITX is supplied with an 800MHz Eden x.86 C3 processor (in EBGA packaging), incorporating 128K L1 and 64K L2 cache; integrated AGP2 graphics 2X; PC100/133 SDRAM support etc. You can check out more spec here.

    The board will retail for around $100, and gets its first mainstream outing at CeBIT this week.

    The Mini ITX is targeted at the embedded market - expect most units to disappear into printer routers and the like; but VIA is also reporting 'grassroots interest' in the product from home PC and commercial system builders.

    The Mini-ITX may be small, but it is not 40 per cent smaller than any other form factor around, as VIA believes. The Danish firm, maker of the M-Series PC, deploys a 157mm x146mm mobo. ®

  • It's stronger than me... (Score:5, Informative)

    by juliao ( 219156 ) on Wednesday March 13, 2002 @01:58PM (#3158090) Homepage
    Sorry if I have to point it out, but...
    170 mm * 170 mm is NOT 170 mm^2
    This motherboard is 28900 mm^2, or 289 cm^2.
    Still a nice little board, at that :)
  • There's only one PCI slot - with support for two cards (via a riser?). No AGP. A semi-custom CPU. Not very expandable. What kind of upgrade path will this thing have?

    • Minimal... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Svartalf ( 2997 )
      It's not MEANT to be upgraded, though. RAM, HD, and DVD/CD drives are the only "upgradeable" parts in this design. This isn't intended for the gamer/hardcore crowd. This is intended for the office space crowd and the home crowd where they have some minimal usage of things like games and DVD playback, but need a largely maintenance free machine that will do things like wordprocessing, etc.

      MOST people that want/need computers actually fall under that category, not the one that the /. crowd generally falls under.
  • How expensive are the processors for that board? I've not seen them out in retail.

  • No offense, Rob, but.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by EricKrout.com ( 559698 ) on Wednesday March 13, 2002 @01:59PM (#3158097) Homepage
    No offense, Rob, but I don't want a "volatile, highly flammable liquid, C2H5OC2H5, derived from the distillation of ethyl alcohol with sulfuric acid and used as a reagent and solvent" on MY motherboard ;-)

    MONOLINUX :: We Prefer Having The Right To Manage Our Own Freakin' Media Files, Thank You [monolinux.com]
  • I've used some BookPC's [dansdata.com] for second computers and the such. They are awesome for that little size. Looks like mobo's like this will help push the little stuff forward. Once you get past the old "little piece of junk that doesn't compare to my full blown rig", they're capable machines. Having your linux distro recognize all that built-in stuff would be a plus.

    I wish that other manufacturers would jump into this boat and push this market further, I'm not buying anything by VIA anytime soon.
    • I know that the 2D/3D is from a Trident Cyberblade core, the sound's an unknown, but they claim at least soundblaster support (not as good as could be, but hey...), and I believe that the ethernet's supported under the latest stable kernels.

      As for performance, it's so-so. I've got an ECS box, branded the i-Note in hand, courtesy of my employer, that I've been playing about with. It's got a different (read: known to be supported and autodetected by Red Hat and others...) ethernet and sound chip choice, but I can give out some performance figures for the CPU all the same. For integer performance, it weighs in at the same basic performance level as a Celeron of the same clock speed. For floating point, it varies from task to task, but it performs anywhere from 1/2-3/4 as fast as a similarly clocked Celeron.

      As a gamer's toy, this has some, but limited appeal. As a general consumer device, this has some things going for it.
    • I have an ECS K7SEM, actually 7 of them. They are a smaller board with a similar VIA chipset to the ones in the book PC. Everything that is on board works in Linux. I've only had a problem with one of them, the network card disappeared. I'm not sure what happened, but I can't get the onboard ethernet to work anymore. Luckily a realtek card that even uses the same Linux module as the one on the motherboard is only $10 and I had some spares in stock, so I didn't take much time to troubleshoot it, I just put a new card in.

      I really havn't had any problems with the VIA all in one chipset, except X support for the VGA part of it, which kind of sucks right now. 2.4.17 and later include some patches to help the framebuffer work with it though, and there are some patches out that aren't in the main kernel tree yet that also help some. It's still a bitch to get acceleration in Mesa going. Anyway, if you aren't using it for games, then it's fine.

  • Heatsink? What Heatsink (Score:3, Interesting)

    by baptiste ( 256004 ) <mike&baptiste,us> on Wednesday March 13, 2002 @02:00PM (#3158106) Homepage Journal
    Anyone notice how the CPU in the pictures says 'Fan/Heatsink Required' yet there are no apparent mounting mechanisms for them? Guess you could use an adhesive heatsink - but I'd rather not! Ah OK - they've got two screw holes - but they don't seem to be in the usual spots? I guess VIA will ship a heatsink with this baby too? Site doesn't seem to mention it
    • C3 doesn't really require that much cooling, and could probably cope with a smallish passive heatsink stuck on with thermal adhesive. The processor is integrated onto the board anyway, so it most likely does come with a cooling solution, but they took it off for pretty pictures.

    • Re:Heatsink? What Heatsink (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Svartalf ( 2997 ) on Wednesday March 13, 2002 @03:15PM (#3158710) Homepage
      Screwholes those aren't- they're those plastic rivets like you see on some of the earlier fansink setups on display cards. Also of note, the info on the chip says "Fan/Heatsink Required", but this beastie is just perfectly happy with a properly sized passive sink. I've seen boards with this CPU (with slightly different parts choices for ethernet and sound) that have this nifty gold colored heatsink that extends only about 3/8-1/2 of an inch above the chip- and they work very well.

  • Regarding the images on their site (Score:5, Funny)

    by 3ryon ( 415000 ) on Wednesday March 13, 2002 @02:00PM (#3158109)
    I have no respect for people who don't realize that there is no point in ZIPing a JPG.
  • I like the come of the new smaller form factors. They can be used for smaller tasks like replacing the clunky 486's that some people call routers or tweaked out and taken to lan parties.
  • Could easily be smaller if they got rid of the serial and parallel i/o. Ps/2 needs to go too! There's enough usb stuff out there that something like this shoudln't need them.

    I haven't used serial/parallel/ps2 in over a year at least. Disable them all in the bios to save interupts.

    • Re:Will serial/parallel ever die ?!? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You will be interested in ABits new legacy free motherboards then, the IT7 and AT7, which do not have serial, parallel or PS2 ports on them, but do have 10 USB ports.

      News on HardOCP today. The Intel board uses i845 and has 10 USB2 ports but support for DDR266 only. The AMD board uses KT333 and has 4 USB2 ports and 6 USB1.1 ports, and support for DDR333.

    • Re:Will serial/parallel ever die ?!? (Score:4, Informative)

      by retrac ( 60508 ) on Wednesday March 13, 2002 @03:36PM (#3158875)
      I guess you only use a computer to play games on.

      They actually have quite a few other uses. How do you program a FPGA using usb? how about legacy printers? LED control? modified pushbutton interface? custom card scanners?

      I think you need to come to terms that the only use of a computer isn't just to play games with the newsest usb joystick/mouse/keyboard.
    • Could easily be smaller if they got rid of the serial and parallel i/o. Ps/2 needs to go too! There's enough usb stuff out there that something like this shoudln't need them.

      I haven't used serial/parallel/ps2 in over a year at least. Disable them all in the bios to save interupts.
      Hey, this is Slashdot, and a lot of people here use Linux :-) USB support for Linux devices isn't exactly, ahem, what I'd call "universal" yet.

      One of the biggest disadvantages to the latest breed of laptops, IMO, is the lack of built-in serial (and to a lesser extent parallel) ports. Switches, filers, servers, and many other devices still have serial consoles these days, and for a lot of embedded purposes, serial is even more useful.

      One smart approach to get the best of both worlds is to just have jumpers or other small connectors on the motherboard, to allow people to wire up a serial/parallel port if they wish, but they don't take up much space if you choose to ignore them.

      PowerLeap's Renaissance [powerleap.com] product does just that, and while it's designed to use your existing motherboard (as just a benign card holder, with no power to it), and hook up to your existing power supply, it could rock as a single board computer, giving the Mini ITX a run for it's money size-wise.

      -me
    • Hmm...drop the serial/parallel/ps2 ports, and pick up 2 more USB...then add 2 Firewire ports. Might not drop the size (what with the extra 4 connectors and such) but it would make for a very tasty little machine...

      But, as has been said by others, they're primarily targetting the embedded market, and only have light interest in a bunch of geeks looking to build their own tiny machine - so the parallel/serial/ps2 ports make a lot of sense.

      Still wouldn't mind a second model without the legacy ports ;P
  • Does anyone know if this mobo has the Problem where upon rebooting the IDE controller switches to PIO mode?

  • Perfect for "hidden" home systems. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MajroMax ( 112652 ) on Wednesday March 13, 2002 @02:02PM (#3158124)
    The summary failed to mention that there's a 10/100 ethernet card built into the board, and a PCI slot to boot, making the board useful for things beyond simple embedded systems.

    Although I wouldn't use it as a desktop system (although perhaps for non-techies...), something like this might be perfect for small network-access terminals of the kind used in stores and universities. Even in the home, something like this might be good as a stereo-system replacement (using the PCI slot for a decent soundcard, vs. integrated sound).

    Are there any cases that would work decently with this design, though, or would something have to be custom-built?

    This mobo is just begging for a beowulf cluster mention, but I suspect that the release price will make conventional solutions less expensive for quite some time.

    • Re:Perfect for "hidden" home systems. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by adolf ( 21054 ) <flodadolf@gmail.com> on Wednesday March 13, 2002 @02:30PM (#3158354) Journal
      Also perfect for in-car systems.

      Low-power, low-cost, very small, and very few electrical connections to worry about. Also plenty fast enough for anything you'd ever need to do while driving on the highway.

      All it takes is a handfull of regular PC parts, some manner of enclosure, and a reliable power supply. The whole thing should end up being small enough to fit under the front seat, which is nice for a variety of reasons (not the least of which that it is climate controlled).

      I envision a plain steel box, perhaps from a company like Sescom [sescom.com], or just whatever I can find at a local surplus house. It doesn't have to be easily modified, only solid.

      Does anyone know of a source for an appropriate power supply, or a kit, or even just plans for one?

      -
    • Although I wouldn't use it as a desktop system (although perhaps for non-techies...)

      Let's see. I sometimes work for a tech school. I wind up doing a lot of writing copy and correspondence. I occasionally need to access spreadsheets, and sometimes I need to pull up an Access database. (I know...pity me)

      I have an IBM Thinkpad 365X laptop. It runs Windows95 and Linux. It runs at 133MHz. It runs Office97 fine on the Windozer side. It also weighs 8 pounds. I keep it in a laptop backpack. It is heavy enough to where I call it "the papoose" at times. I could kill for something a bit faster than that laptop and much more portable. I've seen and used the Cappucino. It weighs a lot less than my laptop. It's my idea of portable.

      If I could build a chibi-chibi PC that I could easily transport between the office and home, I would no longer have to join the fight over the two usable workstations or lug my laptop around. All I would need would be a spare keyboard, monitor and mouse. Tech schools tend to have tons of those on hand.

      I am looking forward to small, portable computers using this new setup. No, this would not be the box to bring to a LAN party, despite the fact that you will be the only one there without a hernia. However, as a "take to the LUG meeting" machine or a freelancer machine it will truly shine.

    1. Get mini motherboard & other computer parts
    2. Get some wires and very small speakers
    3. Build a mini pc using the above, and build it in the shape of your MiL's toaster
    4. Configure so that whenever MiL puts toasts in toaster, the thing says: "If my son-in-law would be here, he'd be making me breakfast. What a swwwweetie."
  • Here's a whole website about Small Wonder [hispeed.com]!
  • Just before the site got completely /.ed , I saw that it said that it could support 2 pci cards, but only one slot? Is this some form of riser card arrangement? Did anyone see it before it stopped working?
    • Its probably a riser and a cable, although they only say cable. Almost all of the PCI signals are shared on a the PCI bus except for a few device select/grant signals, which probably are side chained out of one of those headers near the PCI slot.

  • I dunno about the rest of you, but I'm pretty excited about this. I know there are smaller motherboards out there, but this one actually seems like it could make a useable computer. I'm working on installing a number of computers in my car, but what I really need is a small, portable computer that can support dual monitors. Oh, well - things are at least getting closer.

  • On-board DRM (Score:2, Informative)

    by rlp ( 11898 )
    Anyone notice this in the description of TV-OUT:
    Integrated Macro Vision 7.01.

  • Shuttle already using it? (Score:3, Informative)

    by JPriest ( 547211 ) on Wednesday March 13, 2002 @02:17PM (#3158253) Homepage
    Here is anandtech's review of the Shuttle's SV24 using the mini ITX form factor? and here is a spec I pulled on various form factors.

    Mini-iTX
    170mm 170mm

    iTX
    215mm 191mm

    Flex ATX
    215mm 191mm

    Mini ATX
    284mm 208mm

    ATX full
    305mm 244mm

  • Storage (Flash): DOC Flash memory (8MB ~ 32MB) on board

    Anyone know the purpose of this flash memory is? I would hope it can be used to boot lilo or other similar loaders. I was pleased to see this mobo has no floppy controller. A little off topic, but why not integrate motherboards with a Type I PCMCIA slot? IMO, CompactFlash would make an excellent (and logical) replacement for the floppy drive, especially with the vast amount of cameras and mp3 players that use it.

    I once had hopes for an magnetic media-based open standard to replace floppies (Iomega Zip) but not anymore. Even Award and AMI was forced into supporting zip drives as a bootable device option. IIRC, the zip drive is probably the only proprietary piece of hardware supported by these BIOSes (for AT/ATX standards).
    • DOC is DiskOnChip, from M-Systems [m-sys.com]. It's a flash memory chip that can replace the BIOS chip and provide some amount of nonvolatile storage.

      Their magic is in their BIOS "enhancement" code that makes the flash memory appear as a bootable disk drive. In DOS, it shows up as C:, and they have boot code for several operating systems, including Linux. Linux drivers for mounting/writing the filesystem are also available.

      Second, you don't need a PCMCIA slot to use CompactFlash as a boot device. CompactFlash is already IDE-compliant and can be directly plugged into the IDE controller with the right adapter. They run about $20 from places like this [mydigitaldiscount.com].

      The CompactFlash solution would give you a removable boot device that could be easily mounted/read on any other system. The DOC is smaller, but more convenient since it's already integrated.
    • For some applications, 32Mb is all you need to support a Browser with enough plugins to handle most of the Internet- including distance learning applications.

      As for the question of the Type I slot; Type I is not terribly useful compared to having a Type II/III slot or a CF slot. In the case of not having a Type II/III slot, it's a little pricey. In the case of a CF slot, you can cheat and just map the device to the IDE chain- but they don't like doing that because they think they're going to be selling a lot of these things for IADs and they don't want anything that might be useful for repurposing the device. (Don't get me started on that- it's a battle I've had on many occasions over the past year with these people...)

  • Thanks, but no. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bonker ( 243350 ) on Wednesday March 13, 2002 @02:20PM (#3158277)
    From the video specs:

    * Integrated Macro Vision 7.01

    Macrovision is a feature on just about every TV-out card you can buy today. This means that you cannot do any of the following without macrovision interference:

    - Tape a video game. Sure, who would do this without being a complete gamer luzer. I can think of a few reasons to tape video game play. The one that comes to mind most readily are the occasional tournaments that happen on the MMORPG's and Shooters. Wouldn't you like to have a permanent record if you were the victor or a high ranker in such a tournament?

    - Produce your own video to tape. You produce an original video, but you can't tape it without interference patterns or light noise. This doesn't even aid the hollywood studios, other than cutting potential amature video producers out of the loop. Mostly it just aids producers of high-end video hardware which gives the user control on the kind of output and copyprotection he wants on his stuff.

    - Reproduce non-copyrighted or grey-area video. Anime fansubs are very rapidly becoming an all-online phenominon. Non-english anime videos are recorded from TV or other sources, subtitled, and then distributed for free in areas where that video is not otherwise available. Suppose you wanted to share such a video with someone who doesn't have a computer and can't play back Divx files? Unless you have a way to bypass macrovision, you're SOL.

    - Play DVD's from your computer's DVD player on your TV. If you had a perfectly good Computer DVD setup and TV out device, why should you bother buying a separate standalone DVD player? Ease and convenience, sure, but many who don't care or are trying to save money, this is an extra expense.

    Until I can get a video-out card that doesn't have macrovision enabled, I'm sticking with my pre-macrovision Matrox PCI card for TV out purposes.

    • Re:Thanks, but no. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Junta ( 36770 ) on Wednesday March 13, 2002 @02:37PM (#3158403)
      Most are viable points, however, *display* on TV should always, in theory, be fine (though you can certainly tell the difference side-by-side, most of the time you can't tell independently. So the point about playing DVD on TV can be thrown out, computers are no worse, if not better than most standalone players (progressive-scan easier). So you refuse to buy MacroVision products? Have you bought any Paramount VHS tapes? A standalone DVD player? Those are MacroVision encoded. The point is to screw over VCRs, by sending signal spikes that would not be perceived by the human eyes but trick a VCR into reducing signal strength of normal content to compensate. On much older VCRs, which don't automatically adjust the signal, this makes no difference. Also, you can pick up devices to defeat MacroVision at Best-Buy that work perfectly. Pre-MacroVision would mean pre-PCI, this is not new technology. Fortunately, if you search the web enough you can probably figure out how to disable MacroVision for nearly any video chipset.

      As an aside to your point, in most cases, MacroVision is typically only enable when the drivers detect that content is being displayed that "shouldn't" be copied, so game recording probably works. I think in most cases they go by process listing and display state, if you open an overlay in a different colorspace, macrovision enables, if realplay.exe, mplayer.exe, qtplayer.exe appears in process table, macrovision enables. This is one of the major reasons companies are reluctant to release open-source drivers for tv-out devices, as they all have modifiable registers for enabling/disabling macrovision, and open source drivers would probably get them it hot water with the MPAA/RIAA.
    • Just get one of those sima video copy masters (I found mine a circut city) I'm not sure if it will defeat macrovision 7.0 but it seems to be able to defeat macrovision that comes with most dvd players.
    • go to Ebay.
      buy a Hollywood+ or Creative DXR3

      no macrovision, accelerated Mpeg hardware playback. 100% supported under linux.

      everything else is pure junk in comparison.

  • small mobo = large pricetag for cases/PS (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Sodakar ( 205398 ) on Wednesday March 13, 2002 @02:23PM (#3158299)
    FlexATX, NTX, ?TX.... I admit I don't remember all the form-factors anymore, but one thing that has always bit me was the large pricetag for the cases and mini-power supplies. So... to all of you who are saying "this will make a small, quiet, cheap system..." I agree that it will be small and quiet (most 200W PS's are quiet), but I don't agree that it will be "cheap" -- the case and PS will probably cost $100. (and yes, I know PC cases can cost as high as $300, but the average, plastic case + PS is $30)

    There's always two major sacrifices for size -- and they usually are performance and cost.

    Still, I'm hopeful, as I would love to have a webserver the size of a Cobalt/Sun Qube, but at a comparitively low cost.
    • A 200W powersupply? Are you kidding me? VIA's Eden platform is ultra low power! The CPU doesn't even need to be cooled by fans. I think a 60W powersupply would be enough, if you had a low power harddrive, such as a solidstate CF HD... or one of those low power platter based drives.
  • .. rather than integrating the video, sound, eth0 on the MB, to have them all small cards. not quite pcmcia, but 1/2 the size of the current pci cards. Then a computer case could be built that was 1/2 as winde as current cases and 1/2 as high and people could pick and choose their sound cards. With integrated components if one part fails and there is no slot on the mb you have to replace your mb to gete that component working again.

    Many network cards and sound cards today are 1/2 as wide as they were a few years ago, now they just have to make the part that you connect to the case 1/2 as wide. Small change there.

    This design in the article is the 'throw away design'. If something goes you just throw the whole thing away. Kinda like PDA's.

  • what i want is a machine aboutthe size of a minidisc player. but about twice as thick. and use minidiscs as removable storage - but it has to have an embedded geforce video.

    but this thing would do as well - as long as it can be incorporated into something the size of a cd player. and still must put a geforce chipset on there... even in a daughter board configuration.

  • Smaller Still (Score:5, Interesting)

    by guamman ( 527778 ) on Wednesday March 13, 2002 @02:31PM (#3158357)
    I bought a smaller motherboard from Freetech a while ago with everything, and I mean everything, on board. It will take any PIII processsor and even includes firewire. The dimensions are about 150mm square. If anyone is interested, you have to buy it from Freetech directly, in Japan. Fortunately, VISA gives great exchange rates from dollars to yen. Check out this [freetech.com] for more info.
    • I found the board on the site after a while of searching:

      http://www.freetech.com/u.s.a/1product-2-p6f209. ht m

      It's 170mmX170mm

      I seriously doubt anyone will find any board much smaller than 170X170, as the DIMM slots appear to be about 160mm long. It could probably be done with SODIMMs, though.
  • It's got a Macrovision chip. Is it possible to disable or bypass this or would this be a violation of the DMCA?

  • The Shuttle FV-24 is MUCH better (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Akardam ( 186995 ) on Wednesday March 13, 2002 @03:20PM (#3158748)
    (Specs here [shuttleonline.com])

    This thing has PS/2, video, audio, 2 USB, 2 firewire, an expantion slot (PCI), takes up to a 1100MHz S370 CPU, and a gig of ram.

    Contrast this to the mobo from the story, which has an integrated CPU (yuck!, plus it's a Cyrix based, double-yuck!) and no firewire.

    I'm using the FV-24 for a project of mine and am VERY happy with it. Plus, it was only about 150USD retail, and it's already out there, available.
    • With the exception of the ethernet controller, the shuttle uses a realtek RTL8139 - probably the worst controller currently in production and one of the worst PCI ethernet controllers ever designed.

      I don't know anything about the Via VT6103 but I really doubt it can be worse than the realtek..

      I have no use for firewire and the Via board can be equipped with up to 32MB flash and two PCI devices (with an extra cable), it has a real audio system on board and not this cheopo-fixed-replay-rate-AC97 crap, it's smaller and it's cheaper.

      So it really depends on your needs what is the better motherboard.

  • iMac mobo spanks it! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Refrag ( 145266 ) on Wednesday March 13, 2002 @03:43PM (#3158922) Homepage
    The iMac mobo [cube-zone.com] is small and circular! Beat that!

  • Mirror (Score:2)

    by Peale ( 9155 )
    I've mirrored the original with a couple of changes Here [greenmountainweb.com]
  • I was pretty happy to read that they included consumer S/PDIF digital audio out. Then a little farther down in the specs, it says:

    One S/PDIF out (optional and multiplex with RCA TV out)

    Doh. That sucks. So I can't drive my (composite) TV and digital receiver simultaneously? Hopefully there's a way to split out the digital audio before the multiplexor and add another jack.
  • The real news here is that it costs $100. There have been single-board PCs smaller than this for years, but they've typically been low-volume items sold at much higher price points.

  • I can really see how nice it would be to have integrated technology on one motherboard so my consumer box isn't unnecessarily large, noisy and consuming a lot of wattage.

    But I wonder: can the same kind of reduction in form factor here be converged with all the efforts being put into making server blades that fit gobs and gobs into rack mount chassis?

    It would be great leveraging if the technology used to make the single computer consumer box were the same technology used to make high density server farms.

  • Isn't most of the size of our MBs for expansion slots? Cutting them out isn't really a big innovation.

    I WOULD like to ask tho, in this age of miniturization, why are there so many chips on our MBs, and capacitors etc.

    Can't they integrate it all to a handful of chips?

    I mean, why does my sound card have a dozen capacitors?

  • Great for homebuilt TiVos, DivX and MP3 players (Score:4, Informative)

    by Jagasian ( 129329 ) on Wednesday March 13, 2002 @06:40PM (#3160046)
    Here [pcpowerzone.co.uk] is a review of VIA's new Eden platform (motherboard, cpu, gfx, sound, lan, chasis, ps, etc). Its ultra low power, and you can supposedly use it with fanless powersupplies. The low power profile and low size profile, all the while conforming to hardware specs that support Linux makes Eden a great simple inexpensive solution for homebuilt settop boxes used for such things as: DIY TiVo, DIY DivX player, DIY MP3 player, DIY firewall, or even a DIY console (add USB playstation controllers, MAME, ZSNES, and FCE Ultra).

    I was thinking about getting one of these, put a gig of SDRAM in it (for a 500MB ramdrive), along with a 500MB solidstate compact flash harddrive (with a custom Debian install), and making the ultimate solidstate settop box (no fans either). It would make one killer retro console gaming system for playing classic arcade games, SNES, and NES games.

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