little boxes [was: DECtop]

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Tue, Jul 03, 2007 at 01:55:16PM -0700, Tyler Aviss wrote:
> I've had good luck with VIA mini-ITX boards/CPU's. At current I have a
> web-server running on an 800Mhz Ezra, and a 1Ghz Via C3 on an Epia M-II.
> Nowadays those series have decent driver support for most hardware and even
> graphics acceleration (DRI works with 3d,  not the greatest as it's a Via
> Unichrome chipset, but not terrible either).
> If you shopped around you can find an M-II+RAM+Case for under $300, but
> hard-disks are still a bit extra. Just watch out for the Epia-M's, there was
> a period there where they tended to have bad caps (as demonstrated by my
> other VIA machine that went poof).
> 
> I like the VIA's as servers since mine are non-profit and thus I don't
> really care to run up my power bill. You can also go fanless with some of
> them if you step down the power.
> 
> Recently, I just got a JetWay machine board with an integrated Via C7 and
> dual 1GB NIC's. Unfortunately it behaved rather flaky with both RAM and
> board. After running for awhile, the RAM would start showing up as only
> 256MB (rather than 1GB), and with different RAM there were various lockup
> issues as well as NIC issues (the NIC link would sometimes go up and down,
> even after power-off until the machine was physically disconnected). It
> could be I just had bad luck though, so I'll have to see what happens with
> the new unit which is currently in the mail...

I personally think the Geode LX seems to be a much nicer CPU than the
VIAs.  For example you can find lots of small boards like this one:
http://www.epiacenter.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1074

--
Len Sorensen
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