Hi all,
I picked up this motherboard/CPU combination from Fry's a couple weeks ago and figured I'd post my experiences with it so far since there seems to be very little discussion about these little systems.
I got the model with the 800Mhz C3 chip and stuck it in an old InWin midtower since I haven't been able to decide on a small case yet. I bought this thing to replace a full system that's been sharing my cable modem via Linux for the past few years (ie power bill is too high and I'm trying to cut down on usage
). The motherboard is amazingly small. I only added 128MB of generic PC133 RAM, an old 13GB hard drive, and a Realtek 8139C based NIC that happens to be low profile if you remove the bracket.
I installed Gentoo Linux on it and had some problems getting it to compile as a 686 CPU so had to choose 586 CPU optimizations. The system boots up fast, and so far is acting as an IP Masquerading box, SSH/sftp server, DNS server, time server, and of course as a firewall. This thing has more than enough CPU to do all those things without hurting. I haven't tested sound at all, and the onboard video has been fine but I've only been using it in console/text mode. The onboard NIC works great once you compile the Via Rhine module into the kernel (the Gentoo 1.2 install CD detects it properly).
Basically for $114 + some old hardware I had lying unused I got a system that seems to fit perfectly as a home router and takes very little power. It still uses more than a Dlink, Netgear, or Linksys router would but the customizability of Linux far outweighs the somewhat less power usage imho.
Anyone else have one of these boards? I found www.mini-itx.com and Via Hardware's SFF and Quiet PCs forum to be great sources of info on these systems.
Gaidin
I picked up this motherboard/CPU combination from Fry's a couple weeks ago and figured I'd post my experiences with it so far since there seems to be very little discussion about these little systems.
I got the model with the 800Mhz C3 chip and stuck it in an old InWin midtower since I haven't been able to decide on a small case yet. I bought this thing to replace a full system that's been sharing my cable modem via Linux for the past few years (ie power bill is too high and I'm trying to cut down on usage
). The motherboard is amazingly small. I only added 128MB of generic PC133 RAM, an old 13GB hard drive, and a Realtek 8139C based NIC that happens to be low profile if you remove the bracket.I installed Gentoo Linux on it and had some problems getting it to compile as a 686 CPU so had to choose 586 CPU optimizations. The system boots up fast, and so far is acting as an IP Masquerading box, SSH/sftp server, DNS server, time server, and of course as a firewall. This thing has more than enough CPU to do all those things without hurting. I haven't tested sound at all, and the onboard video has been fine but I've only been using it in console/text mode. The onboard NIC works great once you compile the Via Rhine module into the kernel (the Gentoo 1.2 install CD detects it properly).
Basically for $114 + some old hardware I had lying unused I got a system that seems to fit perfectly as a home router and takes very little power. It still uses more than a Dlink, Netgear, or Linksys router would but the customizability of Linux far outweighs the somewhat less power usage imho.
Anyone else have one of these boards? I found www.mini-itx.com and Via Hardware's SFF and Quiet PCs forum to be great sources of info on these systems.
Gaidin
Facebook
Twitter