Via EPIA Mini-ITX motherboard
Matthew Dillon
dillon at apollo.backplane.com
Sun Jun 15 23:17:09 PDT 2003
:> With no mechanical parts left inside the computer, it should also be
:> robust enough, to be tossen around in the kitchen by children.
:
:I haven't disconnected the two tiny fans inside yet. I think Matthew
:indicated the cpu and chips might need some airflow, so I'm not in any
:hurry -- they're very quiet and the noise isn't unpleasant or whiney
:like disks can.
Yes, there are two options there. You can pick up one of those
little fan speed controllers that goes inline with the fan power
connector, or you can solder a 47 Ohm 1W resistor inline with
each of the two 'red' wires (using heat shrink tubing to shield any
bare copper). This will make the fans spin more slowly and thus
be far quieter (possible because the insides generate a lot less
heat relative to a typical Intel or Amd box.
But if you are going to have an internal HD it might be a good idea
to leave the two tiny fans running at normal speed.
I also had to seal the air vents on the left hand side of the case
so the fans would pull in air across the cpu and chipsets from the
right hand side of the case.
:> Another possible use would be as multimedia centre in the living
:> room, but I suspect you would need the 1GHz version then (or what
:> about the newer chipsets?
:
:Dunno, but that's one of the reasons I wanted to try one out. If it's
:fast enough for audio and video, put a box in the stereo and another
:with the TeeVee. Matthew's way ahead of me here.
It's certainly fast enough for audio, but I suspect DVD or MPEG2-Video
needs an asist from the on-board hardware mpeg2 decoder to be viable on
an EM-6000, and the driver doesn't support that yet (though the
via-supplied Linux driver probably does).
I definitely like the compact flash boot idea. I just ordered a couple
of compact flash IDE adapters for just that purpose.
Mozilla runs fine on an EM-6000 though of course it will be noticeably
slower verse running on a P3 or P4, especially when it is being run for
the first time. The trick with these Mini-ITX boards is, as always,
to stuff them full of ram. I recommend 512M minimum.
-Matt
Matthew Dillon
<dillon at backplane.com>
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