A Motherboard That Doesn't Require An OS

An anonymous reader submits a link to this review of "motherboard that allows access to your multimedia devices via a special BIOS. No operating system required! Good for a home entertainment PC I guess." The review says that it will come bundled with a TV tuner card, too.

bios

[acxr is wasted]

At what point does a bios become an operating system in and of itself. Seems like all the features this thing has will require more than just basic input/output.

Re:bios

[Naked Chef]

The motherboard seems to be geared toward people wanted to create a multimedia center...I guess the real question is when does a collection of electronic parts become a computer and when is it a vcr, dvd, tivo, etc... :-)

Re:bios

[Anonymous Coward]

if it blinks 12:00 then it's a vcr.. ;)

Re:bios

[ackthpt]

At what point does a bios become an operating system in and of itself. Seems like all the features this thing has will require more than just basic input/output.

I'm sure I read something on Slashdot a while back which was meant to be very worrying, like Microsoft proposing standards for BIOS which lock people ever more into Windows. That Soyo is playing with a motherboard which requires no operating system, I rather wonder if the CEO of Soyo will be taking to carrying a gun and checking into hotels using an assumed name because he feels someone from Redmond considers this all very unsavory and threatening and intends to bump him off.

Re:bios

[Ronin_19]

when bios stops meaning basic input output system and it means built in operating system.

Re:bios

[smittyoneeach]

But It Only Shows Bad Ideas Often Succeed By Intrigue Or Stealth.

Re:bios

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you mean 'Badly Implemented Operating System' - i.e. the future Microsoft BIOS? Or is that 'Bastardized Input Output System'?

Actually......

[DABANSHEE]

Considering that QNX has a 1.44MB bootable demo floppy that has:-
1 A live OS
2 A file system (that I think maybe even now has read/write drivers for QNX's 2 file systems & all the FAT derivitives, plus read-only NTFS support)
3 A very elegant colour graphical enviroment/GUI (that beats the crap out of X-Windows & all the layered crudge now normally ontop of it)
4 Networking capabilities (including drivers for common NICs & dial-up modems)
& 5 a web browser (that even I think now supports a ported Shockwave/Flash plugin, if there's a HDD in the system with the required space formated with a supported file system).

Now even though there's obviously a RAM drive thing going on here, there's no reason why moderm BIOSes can't do the same thing, especially considering contemporary flash RAM sizes mean many BIOSes are to a good degree spare space. From what I remember someone posting here on Slashdot, when this or a very similar topic was previously posted (seems like yonks ago now), some PC flash RAM BIOSes are more than half empty, leading to this potential being investigated, simply as a by-product of finding something productive to do with the left over bytes on the BIOS's flash memory.

Re:bios

[AKAImBatman]

Say it with me: OpenFirmware [openfirmware.org]

The fact that PC makers keep reinventing the wheel is annoying.

Re:bios

[ciroknight]

PC Makers reinventing the wheel? What about 90% of Linux Software Developers ;) --note to the anal: this is a "joke", intended to make one "laugh"

Re:bios

[Baumi]

Say it with me: OpenFirmware

Better yet: Sing it with Mitch Bradley [firmworks.com] : Firmware, Open Firmware... [sun.com]

Re:bios

[Midnight Thunder]

And for those where only open source will do, check out OpenBIOS [openbios.org], a open implementation of OpenFirmware (IEEE 1275-1994). Note I believe that it is still a work in progress.

OpenFirmware

[hbackert]

OpenFirmware is all nice and dandy (I use it on Sun and Macs) and I'd love to use it on anything which resembles a PC (not so much on desktop machines, but very much on server like machines), however I have yet to see a OpenFirmware implementation I could use.

I know there are implementations for embedded computers and hardware which requires some sort of BIOS (non-PC compatible stuff), but no need for that. So far FreeBSD has something useable with their bootloader, but it of course depends on the BIOS of

Re:bios

[Pieroxy]

The problem is BIOS haven't evolved in the last 10 years. BIOS is supposed to be the layer between the software and the hardware. Nobosy uses it anymore and most of the drivers for most of the OS just bypas the BIOS altogether.

IMO, a big huge part of the Linux/Windows/CustomOS Kernel (name: the drivers) should be made part of the BIOS.

When you add a third-party card on your computer (say, a Radeon), it should have its own BIOS and be driven by that.

That's what a BIOS is for: provide an abstraction layer to the hardware. It is just failing at this role since a long time.

Re:bios

[GiMP]

Checkout MCA, it seems to do much of what you're asking for. Of course, nobody uses MCA these days - the parts are old, slow, and expensive,

Re:bios

[4b696e67]

I am the other extream. I wish there wasn't a BIOS. Just enough code to start the machine and then pass to the OS of choice. I feel after that the BIOS should stay out of they way. I for one do not want to have to flash rom chips on cards all the time to update drivers! Its bad enough to do that just with my motherboard (BOOT with a DOS boot disk when I have been using Linux exclusively for over 2 years, bah).

Re:bios

[Pieroxy]

Flashing BIOS can be painful, granted. There might be better ways though, I'm sure they would find some.

But imagine the thing: No drivers to write for any OS!!! Wouldn't that be amazing? The manufacturer would write a driver embedded in its hardware, flashable, and tada! All OSes out there benefit from the full-fledge piece of hardware: Linux, Windows, BSD, BeOS, AmigaOS, MS-DOS 1.5 uh, no wait...

The thing is people writing a driver for Windows and people writing driver for Linux are pretty much doing the same thing. What a waste of ressources and time!

BTW, it is not extream, but extreme.

Re:bios

[dial0g]

Before having a universal driver in a BIOS on an add-in card would be useful, you would need specifications for interfacing with said universal driver so it could be used by the various OSes you mention.

Developing some sort of 'common driver api' can happen regardless of if the actual driver code lies on a BIOS or is loaded from an HD and give mostly the same results (you would just have to load the driver from a disk or the net).

Re:bios

[drinkypoo]

The BIOS is just enough code to start the machine. I would imagine that at this point, BIOS calls represent a relatively small portion of the BIOS compared to the code needed for booting from USB Mass storage, 1394 mass storage, the network, etc etc, not to mention the goofy interfaces that people occasionally put on their BIOS as if I needed a GUI to set up my motherboard. If they want to add value, they could put useful help messages in there instead of shit like "2: Sets this option to 2".

Re:bios

[bergeron76]

http://www.linuxbios.com [linuxbios.com]

Does it bother anyone else

[The Tyro]

that BIOS code is critical and readily flashable...

Ever had a virus that hosed your bios? You've now got a dead motherboard unless you've got a burner and some extra ROMS laying around (doesn't everyone?). Some companies have instituted an auto-switching dual bios [giga-byte.com] that helps mitigate this risk, while others are jumper switchable [aopen.com.tw]

Still... it bothers me to have an irreversible "kill" feature on my computer... particularly since I'm error-prone like most people. Ever had a BIOS flash interrupted? I ha

Re:bios

[rediguana]

Hear hear! If hardware makers could agree to move the drivers down to the BIOS, that could be a significant move to tear down one of MSFT's strengths. Right now, they have a very wide range of supported hardware. There could be a significant industry reshuffle if the industry was able to achieve this. Then hardware vendors would only have to produce one driver (and it wouldn't necessarily have to be OSS - although it would be nice). They could spend more time improving their one driver, removing the bugs ra

A BIOS by any other name

[fm6]

Put it another way: the BIOS provides a lot of services that used to be considered part of the OS. On the other hand, having I/O services in ROM is really just a hangover from when PCs didn't have hard disks.

Bottom line: "BIOS" is just a name. It used to stand for "Basic I/O Services", but now it means "whatever's convenient to have in onboard ROM so you don't have to read it off a disk." Words change.

Re:bios

[ZhuLien]

why do you say it is a motherboard without an OS? of course it has an OS, it is on ROM like many other systems (ie: C64, Amstrad CPC...).

Just when I overclock mine...

[ackthpt]

Just when I overclock mine, they cancel Martha Stewart.

Still Crashes

[faust13]

I'm guessing this means it's going to still crash, right?

I was really looking to get rid of that

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it is so hard to come by an OS these days. I mean, they are SO expensive!

Isn't that an OS?

[queen of everything]

Isn't an operating system a program that allows you to control your devices? This still does that, its just all contained in the ROM. Pretty neat, but still an OS. Surely not as bloated as MS media center. (note: I haven't actually tried media center, I'm just guessing)

Re:Isn't that an OS?

[billatq]

Yeah, I agree. It's the silly mentality that if it isn't Windows, then it isn't an Operating System.

Re:Isn't that an OS?

[Vancorps]

Well Windows and OS X are operating systems, Linux isn't. Linux in and of itself does nothing. Red Hat, Debian, Mandrake, Gentoo, those are Linux based operating systems.

That said, who in the world has the mentality that Windows is the only OS?

Re:Isn't that an OS?

[jrockway]

Heh, I don't want to be a pedant (too late), but I believe that that Operating System part of Linux is called GNU. As in GNU/Linux, right :)

Re:Isn't that an OS?

[plams]

Well, everybody knows that BIOS stands for Built-In Operating System (bla bla, old Neal Stephenson joke)

Re:Isn't that an OS?

[KrispyKringle]

Point being, perhaps (the review is being ridiculously slow to load for me; don't know if its Slashdotted or just that I'm stuck on dialup), that there is no secondary OS loaded after the BIOS for this functionality. The poster is implying that the BIOS itself (which is loaded initially upon boot) is the OS that does the playback. This would be significantly different than a traditional setup, I would think.

Re:Isn't that an OS?

[Danse]

If you can't play Solitaire on it, it's not an OS.

Re:Isn't that an OS?

[prockcore]

No, it's a BIOS. Bi means two, so it's twice the OS as MS media center!

Re:Isn't that an OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, according to MS, an operating system *MUST* include the following:

a) GUI
b) web browser
c) media player
d) text editor
e) solitaire
f) metadata filesystem
g) NSA backdoors
h) severely restricted CLI
i) device driver incompatibilities
j) minimum 128M memory footprint
k) MSN beg screens

and finally ...

l) royalties for MS

This may not be a complete list, feel free to add (but not subtract from) it.

Re:Isn't that an OS?

[Villageidiot9390]

Actually, after l, there is...

M) Clippy

Re:Isn't that an OS?

[Pantheraleo2k3]

Good point. Just as a reminder to those of us my age, CP/M stood for Control Program for Microprocessors. It's interesting becuase it doesn't pretend to have everything and the kitchen sink like a Web Browser, media player, CD burner, instant messenger, *cough*Windows*cough*. It's just a program for controlling the hardware.

Re:Isn't that an OS?

[Ryan Amos]

No, it's just a program :) An operating system has certain features that basically allow it to run other things. Stuff like memory management, schedulers, function loaders, etc. This stuff is not essential to running a program on hardware, which you can do either by writing some x86 code or even farming it off to another less complicated CPU. More than likely this is just a monolithic program that runs pretty much independently of any motherboard functions. It'd be a lot less problematic that way, anyway. I

I predict:

[Shut the fuck up!]

This will cause the death of linux. I mean what's better than a free OS? NO OS!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Deja Vu

[TypoNAM]

Now that's my kind of mini-PC and it uses an AMD processor! :)

Re:Deja Vu

[brejc8]

The shame with that system is that its expencive (250 for board + case) and it crashes a lot acording to other reviews.

Bah.. that's nothing

[FrostedWheat]

Show me an OS that doesn't require a motherboard, then I'll be impressed.

That would be Linux.

[mikeophile]

This [newsforge.com] link shows Linux on a chip.

Re:That would be Linux.

[Dahamma]

Wow, so there is no board required? Do you just plug it right into your head?

Re:That would be Linux.

[drinkypoo]

And a motherboard, though they don't call it that. Clearly it has everything a motherboard normally has, including expansion (SIM card.) Since a SIM is a smart card, it can contain more logic than just spitting out your ID numbers, and reportedly, some of them do. (Don't they have some kind of cryptographic system on them normally? Then, they even have a coprocessor!)

Re:That would be Linux.

[blair1q]

Why is that a Linux computer on a chip?

Since when did Linux have a monopoly on the firmware!

I have seen it!

[Maljin Jolt]

It was called "air construction architecture". Back in 8-bit era, I have seen a home made TRS-80 (Video Genie) clone machine, completely built out of components arranged in 3d with glue and wooden sticks and connected by plain LCUA wire, without any board. Of course, it was running NEWDOS-80, TRSDOS, LDOS and CP/M operating systems from 8'' floppy without any problems. This windy design has no problems with heat dissipation from Eastern-Germany made Z-80 CPU clone and Soviet Union made 16kx1 RAM chips anymore, unlike a board version had.

It is even possible on today's platforms, just take some PXA arm processor, wire some flash and ram chips to it, connect some ancient terminal to serial and alas, you have a linux machine.

Re:Bah.. that's nothing

[iminplaya]

Motherboard, bah! I wanna see an OS that doesn't require a license.

Oh great....

[syousef]

Another layer of complexity! And for what? So the operating system you do install overrides it and uses its own routines to access the hardware.

BIOS = BASIC input output system.

Its just not meant to do more. Blurring the edges like this is just plain silly - a duplication of effort at best. Another thing to go wrong and more complexity where its not needed. Now we have bloatware in the HARDWARE too!!!!

Re:Oh great....

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Now we have bloatware in the HARDWARE too!!!!

We've had bloat ware in hardware for quite some time, called ia32. And thankfully, AMD has upped the ante to a 64 bit instruction set.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Oh great....

[Mattsson]

You may not need it, and thus should not buy this product.
I, on the other hand, know quite a few people who would be very glad to have this in their pc's.
No more having to boot the entire os, logging in and start a program just to listen to a cd or watch a dvd.
Yes. There *are* people who doesn't own a seperate dvd, cd and tv, who instead uses their computer for all those tasks due to space or economical reasons.
I doubt that things like these will become the standard, so you'll still have all those other boa

Re:Oh great....

[swb]

I could see this making sense if (a) they kept functionality basic (playing DVDs, CDs, watching TV -- no Tivo/Myth complexity), (b) built it around an open "system" provided driver documentation, (c) made it modular enough to add stuff to it.

If its just a closed-source BIOS that can play TV and CDs and DVDs, then it's just a badly designed all-in-one that's more expensive than the ones that they sell at Wall Mart.

Re:Oh great....

[EzInKy]

Another layer of complexity! And for what? So the operating system you do install overrides it and uses its own routines to access the hardware.

On the other hand, it could potentially remove the extra layer of complexity required because the OS would no longer need to override the bios functions and could concentrate solely on memory management and task scheduling. Another possibility resulting from this could be better hardware compatibility for free operating systems since drivers would be "hidden" in

Um, not to be a smart ass..

[msimm]

But isn't this just a motherboard with its OS embedded in the 'bios'? Sort of one of those things I'd been expecting to see, but always figured it would be ushered in as a DRM requirement. ;-)

New meaning

[Quasar1999]

Bios used to mean, basic input output services. Now I guess it means basically inoperable operating system...

I feel sorry for the site...

[ajiva]

They have already been slashdotted once before (August 2, 2002)...

Re:I feel sorry for the site...

[jeffkjo1]

They have already been slashdotted once before (August 2, 2002)...

So what your saying is they haven't learned and are still using that 266 with 64 megs of RAM connected to a DSL line.

Linux bios

[Anonymous Coward]

Features in the bios seems a perfect application for the Linux Bios project, which puts the linux kernel on the bios flash. Could a minimalist Linux distribution be made to do similar features (TV cards, ethernet) while still fitting in the bios memory?

Phoenix is attempting to make a transition from a bios to a trusted startup environment. This means that it may be hard to install operating systems that are not signed by Phoenix... for money. Thus, windows, Redhat EL, and other commercial operating systems will continue to work fine. This may make custom Linux installs next to impossible - without modchips. (can anyone say xbox?)

A motherboard that doesn't require an OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know if they're going to be porting Duke Nukem: Forever to run on BIOS.

Macintoshes

[Anonymous Coward]

Macintoshes have been able to play Pong in BIOS for years. This is nothing particularly novel.

Re:Macintoshes

[Anonymous Coward]

I googled and found this:

http://members.aol.com/plforth/ofpong/

The search I used was "open firmware pong". Open firmware would be the name for the BIOS-ish thing used in Macs and Sun systems, and perhaps others I'm not aware of.

Wheel-reinventing alert

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

No operating system required! Good for a home entertainment PC I guess." The review says that it will come bundled with a TV tuner card, too

Hmm, let's see: a computer with a small piece of dedicated software in ROM, a TV tuner card and a monitor? Last I checked, I could get that sort of device, minus the messy VGA and keyboard cables, and with about zero boot time, at K-Mart for about $100, and with a bigger screen too.

BIOS

[Shut the fuck up!]

Bah. It's Obviously Slashdotted.

Bios update

[Tribbin]

So now you have to flash your bios every time a new codec-version is released?

Re:Bios update

[rmull]

Worse - every time a new buffer overflow is found.

I'm not sure i understand the point

[Nicolas Pillot]

So... It enable you to use your devices without booting your os ? So basicly you can get things running up as quickly as a tv set if your computer was powered off, and that's all ?

BTW, is this feature useless if you computer is already powered up ?
But it's pretty cool to see it is possible!

Please correct me if i said anything stupid !

Good article.. neat product. Here's the text

[Anonymous Coward]

Soyo SY-P4VAL Version M Multimedia Ready Motherboard

Model: SY-P4VAL

Manufacturer: Soyo

Provider: Soyo

Reviewed By: Miguel

Review Date:
Page 1

Board Layout & Features

This is not meant to be an enthusiast board so there's no cool colored PCB. In fact, at first glance, it looks just like any other motherboard. It's what it offers that sets it apart from all the rest. The board is almost identical to Soyo's SY-P4VGA with the exception that it carries the Whizpro BIOS utility instead of the AWARD BIOS

And it runs which OS?

[jfengel]

So it supports various hardware in the BIOS rather than the OS. But unless it's got the rest of an OS on it, you're either putting some OS on top of it (which can be simpler than other OSes, but the fact is that those OSes have already been written and removing support would be more work) or you can write code on the bare metal.

I'd hate to give up all the things that an OS supports for me, but I suppose that many of them (memory management, processes, libraries, windowing, keyboard, filesystem) aren't necessary on an embedded system. As long as there's a cross-compiler for it and a way to get that stuff on, you may well be able to work with just the BIOS.

Oh, and I tried to RTFA, which would presumably answer my question, but it's slashdotted, so I'm really aiming my question at the embedded software developers out there.

MSI MEGA 180 has a similar feature.

[DaedalusLogic]

http://www20.tomshardware.com/howto/20040227/index .html

It doesn't say that it includes the TV capability. However, audio functions work without any additional hardware at all out of the box. No HD, Processor, or memory required...

Interesting idea if you really want to save power. I'd rather fork over a few more cents per hour and have the capability to actually do something with the media though at a moments notice.

When the BIOS is your OS...

[Anonymous Coward]

...Every screen is a blue screen.

Ummmmm... WHY?

[moosesocks]

Why on earth would this feature be useful to ANYONE.

TV-Tuner functionality is questionable at best in a full-fledged OS. But in a BIOS?? Surly you must be joking!

I love that I can play my CDs and MP3s on my pc... while I work on other things. This monopolizes the whole system and turns it into an expensive DVD player. (Name one thing this can do that a cheap DVD player and a TV can't)

Not to mention that it's an embarrasing waste of resources. A 366mhz G3 could do this and more.

Oh, and hypothetically, I think it would be possible to hack something like this into a machine using openFirmware.

As an aside, it wouldn't be too difficult to write a small OS, deriving bits from Linux or BSD which could do the same thing and only take a few (under 5) seconds to boot (which would be quite plausable as you'd only need to load VERY few drivers). I could boot BeOS on my 750mhz athlon to the desktop in under 10 seconds.

Re:Ummmmm... WHY?

[daemones]

It's useful in bypassing DRM (hopefully).

Re:Ummmmm... WHY?

[tomstdenis]

TV-Tuner functionality questionable?

How dare you. For us non-rich folk it's a good way to turn your PC which has a monitor anyways into a TV. And the WinTV PCI cards are very keen indeed. Good quality, relatively cheap.

Tom

Re:Ummmmm... WHY?

[evilviper]

What the hell are you talking about???

TV-Tuner functionality is questionable at best in a full-fledged OS.

What does that mean? I know I have build a PVR myself (based on Linux), and I'm sure Tivo owners want their systems to have "TV-Tuner functionality".

(Name one thing this can do that a cheap DVD player and a TV can't)

It can do everything a Tivo can do, and much more.

Not to mention that it's an embarrasing waste of resources. A 366mhz G3 could do this and more.

You just try recording 720x480 TV s

Reminds me of...

[neirboj]

... this project [linuxbios.org]!

Seriously folks, I don't mean to get embroiled in the issue of semantics, but there are all sorts of devices in which their OS is lightweight enough to reside in ROM. If the boot code never hands control of the system off to a secondary module (loaded from a disk, for example) how is it not the OS?

Hooray for us BIOS guys!

[MyFourthAccount]

about 12 years ago when I told people that I wanted to learn Assembler (or Assembly as most people insist), most folks I spoke with declared I was foolish. (which was largely true)

Now bringing home about twice the bacon those same folks did, writing BIOS code, I just smile.

And as you see, we got the world by the bawls, us BIOS guys! ;-)

(seriously though, I think the BIOS is a piece of legacy crap that we need to get rid off... too bad it pays my bills)

Re:Hooray for us BIOS guys!

[Wesley Felter]

Yes, but is the extra pay enough to cover the therapy needed after working on such insane code?

I've mostly recovered from my LinuxBIOS hacking...

It's called a console

[superpulpsicle]

PS2, xbox, GC can all run software straight out of medias. This isn't that far fetched.

Sounds like an OS to me

[nurb432]

Lets see, it brings up the system from power off, and manages its resources...

That sounds like an OS..

So its in rom.. so what? Most embedded devices are that way...

Re:Sounds like an OS to me

[erikharrison]

Yeah - for example RiscOS kernel was in ROM. The classic MacOS toolkit was in ROM. In that sense this is nothing new.

Increasing what a piece of hardware knows about itself and can do by itself makes writing drivers (potentially) easier and more robust, and pushes that responsibility back to the hardware manufacturer in an OS neutral way.

If more devices had something like Vesa mode as well, then the road to basic hardware functionality would be easier for all sorts of software producers.

So, all in all, a

Somebody call Neal Stepfenson...

[LaminatorX]

... ant tell him it really was Built In Operating System after all.

This is a BIOS?

[NeoSkandranon]

Whats the difference between this product and a "true" embedded system?

This is new?

[PalmKiller]

My 3 year old toshiba laptop allows you to play audio off the memory card and cdrom with external play/next/last/stop buttons. It only requires a bootup of the os if you want to play dvds. I guess they went a step futher and allowed you to play a dvd, I cannot get to the site now to see :).

Load "*",8,1

[Quarters]

I was using an OS'less motherboard in 1983. My Commodore 64 kicked butt!

prior art

[tverbeek]

This sounds a lot like my Atari 400, just with snazzier upgraded tech. No "operating system" to load, you just turned it on, and you could do stuff with it, like loading a game or a word processor off tape or a disk. (It confused the heck out of me when I heard about having to put a disk in one of those CP/M boxes just to start it up.)

People missing the point/I'd buy one

[tieke]

The comments so far seem to be missing the point with this one. Half appear to be trying to define BIOS or proving they've read snowcrash, and the rest are complaining about DRM or saying a DVD player is cheaper.

The intended audience for this is obviously the living-room entertainment machine sort of application. For instance, rather than have to wait while the OS loads, and then use some software-based UI just to play a CD, you just have to push the on-button, drop in your mp3 or audio CD and it'll automatically start playing within seconds - no having to turn on the TV to check things are ready/you've pushed a button on your remote keyboard at the wrong time etc.

If you want to play standard applications - just boot into your normal OS and fire up your divx player, stepmania etc. If you have replaced your home entertainment CD/mp3/DVD player with this and just want to access one of those functions in a UI that you haven't kludged together, with no OS wait/booting screens etc - no problem.

My only major request would be that it plays xvid/divx encoded avis in the BIOS environment as well - licence issues aside, I can easily foresee this being a great addition to one of those hushpc computers.

Microsoft 2008 BIOS PRO

[uodeltasig]

Could you imagine what would happen if Microsoft got a hold of this.

Welcome to Windows 2008 BIOS PRO.... You have 78 critical BIOS updates to perform.

To uninstall Internet Explorer: Replace chips 45- 1035 and solder points 20, 40, 30, and 90. (At least you would be able to uninstall it I guess).

When installing Real player: It permanently writes spyware to part of your flash memory and then charges you for it.

Well, that's nice...

[shigelojoe]

But does it run Linux?

I mean...

Does it support Ogg Vorbis?

Er, wait...

Shit. I'm out of material.

One-upmanship

[Bingo Foo]

The next thing you know, they will be making TVs and stereos that don't even require motherboards!

slashdotted (mirror (google's cache))

[frazzydee]

Here's google's cache [216.239.41.104] of the same page. I know the site isn't completely slashdotted- as it runs fine at some moments, and VERY slow at others. As usual, google's cache [216.239.41.104] is much more reliable.

*whistles*

[enrico_suave]

that's pretty damn cool.

The problem with being a geek, is that you never run out of cool crap that you "have to" buy... they keep bringing cooler and cooler shit to market.

just when I thought I wanted a mini-itx [mini-itx.com] mobo for my PVR project this comes along... oy vey!

e.

This review is annoying

[drinkypoo]

... and the board is goofy. It comes with a remote and you can turn it off with the remote, but you can't turn it on that way. You would think they would have learned from how annoying people found that on the Xbox.

Also look at the page on performance [extrememhz.com] and you will see them compare it to the MSI KM2M Combo-L. If you do a google search [google.com] on those terms, the first link is their review of that board [extrememhz.com], which can take a "1GHz to 2600+ processor." On the performance page they benchmark the Soyo P4VAL (Projected price, $69 without tuner) with "Pentium 4 2.4GHz 533MHz" ($124) against the MSI KM2M ($54) with an unspecified CPU, but it does not have 333FSB support so it can't be more than an Athlon XP 2600+ 266MHz FSB ($77 - Actually the 333FSB model is $2 cheaper.) Hence, $193 for the soyo vs $131 for the MSI plus its most powerful CPU. The MSI does almost as well on the CPU benchmark (4391 vs 5810 PCMarks) and does much worse than the Soyo on memory (2400 vs 4844) and their conclusion for this page is "The Soyo P4VAL will have an MSRP of around $69 (without TV tuner, remote, etc, just the board), which is only about $13 more than the KM2M motherboard. It will obviously offer you much more in terms of features and performance and therefore, it's simply a better buy." So let me get this straight, a full size motherboard which, with the tested CPU will run you $63 more, being used for a purpose which does not require massive memory bandwidth, is a better buy? Yes it offers the goofy BIOS menu but that thing doesn't even seem to have SVCD support.

That's right, they don't bother to tell us if it supports nonstandard-bitrate VCD (known as XVCD) and if it doesn't support XVCD, SVCD, and XSVCD, I consider that to be an amazingly crippled featureset for a multimedia PC, one which will mandate the use of a real live hard-drive-installed (or net-booted, I guess) operating system. Neither their etbios page [extrememhz.com] nor soyo's page for the board [soyousa.com] bother to tell you what types of media are played, but the review says "You have access to multi-media functions such as AUDIO/MP3 CD playback, VCD playback, DVD playback and TV Tuner support" which implies that that's all the functions. No MPEG4, for example, and no SVCD. This bios will only read media on CDs as far as I can tell from the review, so you can't play media off a hard drive, USB, memory stick, etc etc. In other words, it will do the things a $80 DVD player from Wal-Mart will do for you, but its output probably won't be as good (I don't see any component output on this baby, but my $80 Pana DVD-S35S is progressive scan, supports VCD, SVCD, XVCD, XSVCD, DVD, MP3, WMA, and JPEG.)

In fact, the reviewer couldn't even figure out how to get the TV feature to autoscan to select only good channels (a feature which might not even be present, for all anyone including soyo will tell us) but was impressed that there was an escape function to go back to the menu. Woop-de-doo!

All in all, this article is unprofessional crap, and the etbios is basically useless. The fact that it has funky bios means that it's likely to be a pain in the ass sometime down the road. This looks like a product looking for a purpose. Were it done right, with access to filesystems not on optical media, and support for additional codecs in some format, it would be interesting, but this product is as goofy as the review.

I really like the concept, but...

[ProppaT]

I really like the concept of a multimedia oriented motherboard.

And, if it wasn't for the fact that I have a modded X-Box that I paid $125 that, for the most part, does all of this except for tv tuning and has the added advantage of playing X-Box games as well. By the time I build this mobo into a case, it's gonna be the same size as an X-Box too...

The review hit the nail on the head, though. If they did the same thing, but made it micro-ATX and threw on on-board wifi, people would jump on it. I know I'm looking for a small multimedia hub for the bedroom. Heck, I don't even want to put a hard drive in it. I just want a shell that will pull stuff off my main PC.

BIOS = Basic Input Output System

[brejc8]

BIOS [maran.com].
But I do get your point.

Re:BIOS = Built-in Operating System

[dirkdidit]

Actually, BIOS stands for Basic Input/Output System. This motherboard clearly does more than just basic input/output. So techincally, if it's in the BIOS, it's not an operating system, even though it really is a lot like an operating system. Confused? Good.

Re:BIOS = Built-in Operating System

[Elwood P Dowd]

Boy, are you going to get a lot of responses to that question.

No, BIOS stands for "Basic Input/Output System." That's right, Neal Stephenson got it wrong in Snow Crash. BIOS is one of many ways for a computer to organize its input and output devices so that it can be accessed by a proper operating system. I'm sure there are plenty of geeks here who can tell you more about it than me.

Apple and Sun don't use IBM style PC BIOS. They use OpenFirmware. Iduno what the other kids use.

Re:BIOS = Built-in Operating System

[Elwood P Dowd]

He mentioned the error in his second edition. In his follow-up-and-thank-you section. His response was kindof lame. IIRC, he said that he still thought his definition was funnier in the context of the novel, or more interesting, or better somehow. He sounded defensive or something. Its ok, dude, you were just wrong.