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September 05, 2017
Choosing the right DC-DC PSU

August 27, 2015
AMD's Project Quantum

August 13, 2015
The Redstone PC is the ultimate Mini-ITX Minecraft Machine

October 09, 2014
The "Restomod TV"

April 09, 2013
Installing NAS4Free

February 28, 2013
Building an XBMC 12 Home Theatre PC

January 25, 2011
XBMC Guide updated to version 10.0

August 06, 2010
Building a Green PC

February 15, 2010
Building an ION powered HTPC with XBMC

October 10, 2008
The "Cambridge Autonomous Underwater Vehicle 2008"

Mini-ITX Online Store

September 12, 2008
"Florian", the DVD burning robot

September 05, 2008
The "i-EPIA"

May 22, 2008
The "GTA-PC"

April 14, 2007
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January 19, 2007
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December 07, 2006
The "Tortoise Beetle"

October 02, 2006
The "DOS Head Unit"

August 31, 2006
The "Janus Project"

August 05, 2006
The "Leela PC"

June 26, 2006
Nano-ITX in a Football

May 17, 2006
The "EPIA Alloy Mod"

April 11, 2006
Neatorama's Collection of Case Mods

February 18, 2006
The "Rundfunker"

October 24, 2005
The "ITX TV"

October 06, 2005
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August 05, 2005
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July 21, 2005
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July 18, 2005
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July 07, 2005
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May 25, 2005
The "Accordion ITX"

Mini-ITX Online Store

May 16, 2005
The "FileServerRouterSwitch"

May 15, 2005
The "Mini Falcon"

May 13, 2005
The "Bender PC"

May 11, 2005
The "BBC ITX B"

May 10, 2005
The "Frame"

April 20, 2005
The "Jeannie"

March 09, 2005
The "Cool Cube"

January 30, 2005
First Nano-ITX Project?

January 17, 2005
The "iGrill"

January 15, 2005
The "Gumball PC"

December 15, 2004
The "Deco Box"

December 03, 2004
The "TERA-ITX"

October 06, 2004
The "Coealacanth-PC"

September 17, 2004
The "Gramaphone-ITX-HD"

August 26, 2004
The "C1541 Disk Drive ITX"

August 25, 2004
The "SEGA-ITX"

August 13, 2004
The "Quiet Cubid"

August 06, 2004
The "BMWPC"

July 14, 2004
The "Moo Cow Moo"

July 02, 2004
The "Mini Mesh Box"

Full alphabetical archive on right hand side of page...


EPIA MII 12000 Review
Posted on May 18, 2004 Jump to:

Board Connectors, Headers & Jumpers

The interesting part of the EPIA M motherboard

As with previous EPIAs, VIA have managed to pack a lot of connectors and headers into a small space. The EPIA MIIs have the following connectors:

2 x IDE Hard Disk connectors, both supporting Ultra DMA 33/66/100/133. Up to 4 hard drives, optical drives or other IDE devices can be connected (2 per channel, configured as a Master and a Slave drive)

Case Connectors - somewhere to plug your Power and Reset switches, LEDs for Power, Hard Disk activity and Sleep mode (when the power is on but the machine is suspended), and a case speaker.

Fast IrDA Infrared Module Connector (FIR). We would recommend a USB-based ATI Remote Wonder to solve your remote control needs - it also works round corners...

USB 2.0 header, to attach 2 additional USB 2.0 ports. There are already 2 USB 2.0 ports tucked underneath the RJ-45 ethernet port. This is the yellow header in the picture. EPIA M and MII compatible cases often have headers for these.

Wake-On LAN connector - attaching this to a WOL compatible network card allows the system to be powered up when a signal is received through the card. On the classic EPIAs this is called Wake-On Modem and doesn't have the natty plastic housing the EPIA M has.

The Firewire header can be used to attach an additional Firewire port.

The EPIA M has a second serial port in header form, COM2. Useful for any number of serial applications without tieing up the external COM1 port.

Floppy Disk Drive Connector - for connecting 360K (!) to 2.88M floppy drives - thankfully not present on the classic EPIAs. Here at Mini-ITX we don't really see the point in floppy drives any more. The sooner they are eradicated from the world, the better. We've got the internet, CDRs are ten a penny and hold a bazillion times as much information, and we can even emulate a floppy image over a LAN using PXE. It's the evil looking black mass in the middle of the picture, but don't look at it directly - it'll put a hex on you.

CD-In Connector for routing audio directly from a CD drive. Not strictly required, as this can all be done digitally nowadays. An appropriate audio lead would usually come with your CD or DVD drive.

Front Audio Connector - the line out / microphone audio connectors can be disabled and routed to a front panel for convenient connection of additional audio devices. In Smart 5.1 mode these would be the rear audio connectors. The black header at the top left of the picture.

I2C Connector. A Small Area Network (SAN) is used to connect the Integrated Circuit (IC) components on a circuit board, or within a box or system. Components can be the PC, a keypad, LCD display, status indicators or switches and sensors. I2C is one such system - it's an Inter-Integrated Circuit Bus (geddit?). The classic EPIAs don't have this. Pretty useful if you're making a robot.

Gaping hole

Gaping hole for an optional LVDS Module Connector. Low Voltage Differential Signaling is a low power method for high-speed (gigabits per second) data transmission. LVDS is interesting because it uses 3 voltage levels instead of the usual binary method to encode data. at a higher maximum transfer rate. Used extensively in laptops as a flat panel display interface. We've never seen an LVDS Module equipped EPIA MII in retail, possibly a good thing for most would-be VAIO butchers as using these things isn't as easy as it looks. Super-small 10x5mm connector with 40 pins - not present on the classic EPIAs, but they have the equally unused Video In Connector and PCI Riser Card Connector instead.

As the MII doesn't have a parallel port due to space constraints, there is an LPT pin header to attach one.

There are two jumpers on the motherboard. The first clears the CMOS RAM, useful for clearing your BIOS settings after a disastrous RAM tweaking attempt. Only do this when the system is off. The second selects between RCA Video or S/PDIF output on the dual-purpose Video/Audio rear connector. It's the single red jumper, and starts life in the RCA position.

All EPIAs have ONE PCI Slot. Choose your card wisely. This isn't as bad as it sounds - USB sockets can be turned into second and third ethernet interfaces with appropriate adapters, and there is already on-board audio and a whole slew of standard interfaces. Probably the best use of the slot would be with a PVR card, or a decent 3D card (or a card supporting both functions).

Board Connectors, Headers and Jumpers -->


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