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Hardware

VIA Epia SP 13000 Review 189

Posted by timothy from the small-bigness dept.
Nehemiah writes "Epiacenter.com just published a review on the brand-new VIA Epia SP 13000 mini-itx mainboard. It's the first VIA Epia board with the CN400 chipset and, together with the new epiOS Linux distribution that is announced in the review, it seems to have a very good performance during MPEG2/MPEG4 playback."
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VIA Epia SP 13000 Review More

VIA Epia SP 13000 Review

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  • Why epiOS? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by woah ( 781250 )
    Can anyone please enlghten me on what so special about epiOS linux that other distros can't manage?

    Or, more to the point what the hell is it anyway?

    If it is what I think it is, which is a distro that is taylored toward EPIA, why make a whole distro and not just a tarball of linux drivers and tools?

    • If it is what I think it is, which is a distro that is taylored toward EPIA, why make a whole distro and not just a tarball of linux drivers and tools?

      All that's really involved in creating a "new" distribution is changing a few strings. Very, very, few distributions are from scratch these days.

      I think the idea in this case is that it's better to put a disc in the box that says "Install me", rather than a bundle of packages that may or may not work, depending on what system you're running.

      In any event,

    • Re:Why epiOS? (Score:5, Informative)

      by isolationism ( 782170 ) on Monday April 04, 2005 @09:10PM (#12139857) Homepage
      There are some pretty "heavy" changes to get the EPIA working well -- Kernel patches, a Unichrome (graphics) driver for Xfree86 (none for X.org yet, sadly :( ), etc.

      There are also some "positive" things that come out of the VIA -- Like the CLE266 being one of the best-supported video cards by the DirectFB project. That said, I'm actually very, very happy that there are places like the EPIA Wiki [epiawiki.org] to walk you through how to get all of this stuff working on your own distribution instead of being railroaded into using VIA's. Mine runs Freevo on Gentoo, which suits me just peachy.

      I'm sure VIA just baked everyone else's Linux patches into a single distribution to roll out with their hardware -- Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course -- But I would undoubtedly have preferred VIA to have spent more time contributing to the success of existing, frequently-used projects (similar to how they did for Xine to get it to run with their mpeg4 acceleration, I guess, although preferrably in a more package-neutral manner) for their hardware than building their own distribution on the backs of all of the fine folks that have worked so hard to make these adorable little boxes go.

    • Re:Why epiOS? (Score:5, Informative)

      by pavon ( 30274 ) on Monday April 04, 2005 @09:22PM (#12139919)
      This information is a little out of date and only what I picked up while setting up a Mini-ITX MythTV box (I'm not involved in the EPIA development) so there may be inaccuracies, but is mostly correct for the most part.

      The driver situation for the EPIA boards has been less than desirable. The VIA engineers were very supportive of linux and wrote drivers for all the chipsets on their boards, including accelerated XFree86 drivers, video out, hardware video encoding, etc. They were even cool enough to release the source to everything the were allowed to (some stuff was restricted because of third parties). But they did a poor job of keeping the binary driver packages up-to-date, and couldn't seem to decide which distros they were going to support, so you had the situation where this driver was packaged for these three distros, and that driver was packed for these other 4 distros.

      Eventually, some people got frustrated and forked the code, vastly improving it - this is the Unichrome project. But they also considered it to be in development, and so only made the source available. And there was still the hassle of dealing with the few closed source drivers. The best distro by far for EPIA became gentoo, probably because it was easier to maintain and use an up-to-date source package than a binary one, and most of the EPIA community gravitated over there.

      I don't know why the other distos didn't include unichrome drivers - perhaps they were just waiting for them to stop being beta. (Some may include them now, it has been at least 6 months since I checked). Anyway this appears to be a simple gentoo live-CD with the drivers in question. And that kicks ass. An OS that works out of the box will save newbies all sorts of time - I spent a couple weekends just figuring out where to find the newest versions of all the various drivers. And it really isn't a whole new distro - it is just a live-CD of existing distro. Considering how easy people have made it to roll your own live-CD, it makes a heck of a lot of sense for somone to do this.

  • Because... (Score:4, Funny)

    by PrimeWaveZ ( 513534 ) on Monday April 04, 2005 @07:53PM (#12139309)
    MPEG2/4 playback is the first benchmark any informed computer buyer should look at.
  • Thats all I want to know.. does it run or does it just sit there and smolder like the server thats hosting that review? ..and does it smolder linux?

  • Legacy Ports (Score:4, Insightful)

    by stupidcomputers ( 852188 ) on Monday April 04, 2005 @07:55PM (#12139336)
    Why oh why on these new small form factor devices do they insist on keeping legacy ports such as serial or the old PS2 style mouse and keyboard? Either make it small and get rid of them or put something useful such as firewire there instead.

    • Re:Legacy Ports (Score:3, Informative)

      by ZorinLynx ( 31751 )
      No way man, we must KEEP The PS/2 keyboard port... Where else are you going to plug in your vintage IBM Model M clicky-keyboard?

      Not available in USB!

      -Z
      • "Where else are you going to plug in your vintage IBM Model M clicky-keyboard?"

        Rejoice! Thanks to the miracle of modern technology, now you can use that Model M with a USB only computer!

        IBM model M ps/2 cable to USB adapter converter [clickykeyboards.com]

        Warning, link contains pictures of a Mac Mini using a genuine IBM Model M.

    • Re:Legacy Ports (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Bradee-oh! ( 459922 ) on Monday April 04, 2005 @08:03PM (#12139410)
      I use standard DB9 rs232 ports as well as parallel ports for all sorts of testing, debugging, and even deployment applications. I've deployed epia boards in energy management systems more than once utilitizing the serial and parallel ports.

      Yes i know that you get get usb->serial converters and usb->parallel converters. And for notebook/desktop applications that makes sense. However these boards are obiously not mainstream. They are often used for development/prototyping and for low power applications. The needs for that market are different.

      At least that's my take on it. I for one am glad to see not EVERYONE is going "legacy free."

    • Re:Legacy Ports (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Because embedded systems use a lot of legacy hardware! How many industrial devices have you seen that used the firewire that you mentioned? I work full-time with embedded systems, and I've never seen one. Serial is still king.

      We build about 20 different products using the Via EPIA CL ITX motherboards, and on every single one of them, we use four RS232 serial ports and the parallel port. The OS, like a lot of real-time OS's, we use doesn't support USB keyboards so we have to use PS/2-style keyboards. I
    • Some people probably use these boards to actually talk to the RS232, or to talk parallel port to an older printer or whatever. I suspect the real issue is that they're using an older SouthBridge chip that has all those ports on it, so they figure they might as well populate them.

      Personally I'd rather have a couple of extra USB2 ports and an extra network port (though you can add the network port via USB, or you can add a wireless connection via USB since there's no PCMCIA.)

    • Re:Legacy Ports (Score:2, Informative)

      by w8300v-2 ( 760576 )
      Because people still use those ports. Until the rest of the world throws away all their PS/2 keyboards and mice, and their UPS, RAID box, etc. with RS-232 serial port, these ports are going to keep appearing on motherboards. Would you believe there are still people using ISA cards? ISA cards! Oh, the horror..
    • Or rather, why would anyone use a flaky interface such as USB for connecting one's mouse or keyboard?

      All hardware people I personally know detest it, especially for keyboards. They often cause issues at boot-time, tend to interact badly with motherboards, etc. For example, a mouse I've personally saw at a customer triggered wake-up a few seconds after the machine was powered off, even though all relevant settings in the BIOS were disabled.

      PS/2 (and even DIN) connectors just work. Reliably.
    • About a monthagoI was all fired up to buy a Mac Mini. However, since I do a lot of embedded development (microcontrollers and FPGAs), the need for a rock-solid serial and parallel ports is mandatory. Most USB to rs232 and USB to parallel converters are not good enough for the JTAG probes and dev boards I need to work with.

      Therefore, I didn't buy the Mac Mini. However, I have seriously started looking at an EPIA based system with the Nehemiah core. Solid performance, and all my devtools are supported. Apple
  • Would it make a good carputer [carputers.org]? If so, we'd love to syndicate the content and post about it.

  • Well, the site's slashdotted and the mirror put up in another post only has the first page, so I have some questions.

    First, just how well is Linux supported by this? Are there open-source drivers for the MPEG2/4 decoding hardware?

    Second, there is mention of the idea of using this as a PVR; does this board have the huevos necessary for real-time encoding? I understand that the epia line is pretty wimpy in the CPU department, and MythTV, at least, requires more than I think this board can do. It has M

    • Whether the MPEG2/4 decoding hardware drivers are open source or not is only relevent for people who insist upon compiling everything themselves. If that includes you, I can't answer your question.

      I am aware that KnoppMyth has supported this hardware for playback. Again whether it is an out of the box install and run situation I can't comment on, I don't have one, so I have not tested it. You are welcome to check over at and persue the forums to see if your question is addressed.

      MythTV recomends a 450mhz
      • Whether the MPEG2/4 decoding hardware drivers are open source or not is only relevent for people who insist upon compiling everything themselves.

        Not true at all. It's also relevent to people who don't want a $50 purchase to dictate all the other hardware and software they are allowed to run. Allow closed source drivers and it's easy to end up in a situation where your video card needs kernel X but your sound card drivers only work with kernel Y and that bug that causes your system to crash once a week
        • Actually I would not use this to capture video at all.

          The goal of the Home Theatre PC next to the TV is to provide as little interference with watching what you have recorded as possible.

          As has been mentioned before, this board provides a small form factor device that by design does not require a large number of loud fans to keep quiet.

          Capturing video, whether by a card that does the mpeg encoding in hardware, or through the cpu, tends to generate quite a bit of heat that needs to be removed from the sys

    • Re:PVR? Really? (Score:3, Informative)

      by spagetti_code ( 773137 )
      I've spend considerable time on this, so allow me to share my pain...

      I created a mythtv box from an EPIA MII12000 (1.2GHz). I put it into a georgeous Silverstone LC06 [silverstonetek.com] case. I switched the fans with silent ones, chose silent optical/HD drives. The end result is just awesome. In fact the 12000 is way overpowered for what I am doing - thanks to onboard encoding in the Hauppauge PVR card I use, and decoding in the EPIA motherboard - and the CPU sits at 10% most of the time. The 800MHz CPU would have been a bet

      • imho that case is just like any other generic HTPC set top case.

        now thats a case [silentpcreview.com].
      • Thanks for the informative reply. The stability problem is what I was afraid of - seems to be in keeping with Via's reputation.

        Have you considered the (admittedly expensive) Pentium M board from AOpen?

        Mini, slightly off-topic rant:
        I love Athlon chips, but I hate the fact that for a long time just about the only chipset option available for them was from Via, and they always seemed to be buggy. I think this is why so many people are prejudiced against Athlons and recommend Intel for stability.

        A few

    • FWIW: even if you have a much more beefy system, you're better off using a tuner/encoder card that has hardware based MPEG encoding.

      I use a via epia m10k [byopvr.com] in one of my PC PVRs [byopvr.com] and by using a pvr250/350 it handles recording and playback pretty easily.
      (gratuituous self links)

      The EPIA VIA M-series (and higher like this SP) have a mpeg decoding accelleration (not full on decoding) but it down help.

      E.

  • Mac Mini vs EPIA (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tomRakewell ( 412572 ) on Monday April 04, 2005 @08:38PM (#12139646)
    I have installed Linux on a dozen Mini-ITX boards during the past two years. I love the low power consumption, and the low price.

    But, by just about any standard (MPEG playback, video performance, processor speed, form factor size), the Mac Mini beats the Mini-ITX hands down. Okay, I put nicer hard drives in the Mini-ITX boxes than I get in the Mac Mini.

    After using both systems as desktop PCs, I can say that the Mac Mini feels like a Ferrari, while the Mini-ITX boxes feel like a Ford Focus. Apart from the fact I actually *like* the Gnome desktop better than OS X, I can still use the Mini to run all of my favorite Unix apps. And, unlike the VIA Mini-ITX boards, where there's a ton of hardware that I can't get to work right (CLE-266 chipset with MPEG decoding), everything on the Mac Mini JUST WORKS.

    I don't know. I'm thinking my days running Mini-ITX boxes is over. The Mac Mini has really won my heart, and I can't see why anyone wouldn't consider it for their small form-factor computing needs.

    I'm a bit tempted by the promise of a Linux distro tailor-made for the EPIAs, but I kind of have a distro (OS X) tailor made for my current-favorite SFF box.
    • everything on the Mac Mini JUST WORKS.

      Ah, I see, another member of the Apple-sponsored "JUST WORKS" marketing campaign.

      Everything always "JUST WORKS" on machines with preinstalled supported operating systems, whether it's OSX, Windows, or Linux. Things can stop working once you start installing third party apps or new hardware, on any of those systems, including the Mac Mini.

    • Re:Mac Mini vs EPIA (Score:3, Informative)

      by bani ( 467531 )
      Careful. The drive in the mini is not rated for continuous use. It's a notebook drive, so you should run it as little as possible. (It's rated for many sleep/wake cycles, but not continuous use).

      • Re:Mac Mini vs EPIA (Score:5, Insightful)

        by dublin ( 31215 ) on Tuesday April 05, 2005 @01:29AM (#12141190) Homepage
        Careful. The drive in the mini is not rated for continuous use. It's a notebook drive, so you should run it as little as possible. (It's rated for many sleep/wake cycles, but not continuous use).

        Horseapples! Where are you getting this stuff? Notebook drives are tougher in every way than their desktop counterparts - they have to be. I suppose that some super-cheap notebook drives that aren't rated for continuous use may exist, but I'm not aware of any, and that certainly doesn't apply to the reputable brands. I've got several tiny little servers that have been running laptop drives for years with no problems. (One's an Epson "cash register" 486, another's a Toshiba Libretto 50J, and others are even stranger.)

        And although hard disks aren't my specialty, I know more than a little about them, having been a program manager for both Latitude and Inspiron at Dell, and spinning up a company to build high performance storage-over-IP solutions based on high-end commodity RAID controllers a few years ago. The only real downside to Notebook disks is their relatively slow transfer speeds, since the disk mfrs for unfathomable reasons don't put serious controllers on the notbook mechanisms for a year or two. In many cases (especially if you're RAIDING them) this is more than made up for by their lower seek times - the heads don't have to move very far, and because they're smaller and less massive, they respond quicker.

        I'm looking at building a custom small, low-power, super reliable RAID array for a client right now, and I'm actually looking even smaller - at the 1.8" mechanisms like the ones in a lot of the new MP3 players. The result will be *far* more reliable than any desktop drive could ever be - I could not possibly neet this customer's requirements with desktop drive hardware...
        • Dublin - how well does Uwin work? I use cygwin, and so color me interested. I mostly build small shell scripts. Thanks.
    • Apart from the fact I actually *like* the Gnome desktop better than OS X, I can still use the Mini to run all of my favorite Unix apps.

      Umm, why don't you run yellow dog linux [yellowdoglinux.com]? Then you can run all your favorite linux apps with your favorite desktop environment.

    • Re:Mac Mini vs EPIA (Score:2, Insightful)

      by realkiwi ( 23584 )
      CLE266 does not do MPEG 2 decoding it does MPEG 2 acceleration.

      I am about to begin work on a ubuntu derivative that has CLE266 support built in. Hang out on the unichrome list for more help on getting your working.
  • The real question is--

    Can I run LinuxBios on this? If so, where can I buy one pre-loaded?

  • http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductdesc.asp?DEP A =0&description=56-110-030&ATT=Barebone+Systems&CMP =KNC-goog13 [newegg.com]

    I'm not related to Newegg in any way. I just run one of these at home as file/web/dhcp server, and I think it's freakin' insane that you can buy this kind of barebone so cheap. Add HDD and RAM and you're good to go.
    • It's way too big. It's like a shortened mini-tower.

      I wish someone made a barebones system with a really small case (like the Casetronics Travlas) for a price like this. I don't want any 5.25" or 3.5" slots at all; just a slot for a laptop drive at the most. I want to build a system to put in my car, but the cost of the cases suitable for this purpose is extremely high. I also want to build a small diskless HTPC to run MythTV on (with the encoding being done on my main computer), but again the cases sui
  • http://www.hushtechnologies.net/ [hushtechnologies.net] has lots to choose from with no fans. I would have paid the price premium a couple years ago if I'd known how noisy my Shuttle would be.

    • Hush are much too expensive, IMHO. My EPIA board with fanless 12 V DC-DC converter and brick transformer is absolutely silent, and costs less than 400 bucks, including 512 MB RAM. It's not the fastest platform out there, but as a non-gaming desktop box, it's perfectly usable.

  • I'd rather a Epia DP review (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ozbird ( 127571 ) on Tuesday April 05, 2005 @01:21AM (#12141163)
    The Epia SP is okay, but it isn't exactly a big step up from its precedessors. The Epia DP is a far more interesting beast - dual processors extends the potential uses of these boards much further than a clock speed or chipset upgrade.

    I'll also believe them when I see them: despite much fanfare, the Nano-ITX boards are still largely vapourware.
  • It seems the beta is only available to a limited number of testers, which IMHO goes against the idea of opensource. So can anyone provide a torrent?
  • As of kernel 2.6.11, there is STILL no working cpufreq (longhaul) CPU throttling support for epia boards. The latest status is discussed here [viaarena.com] There is also no ACPI control of the fans; they're always on and not under software control (this would be a problem under any OS).

    Although the boards are marketed towards users who build machines that are always left on, they skimped on some obvious features needed by most users in this market.

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