Home | News Archive | July 2003

The "Bantam PC"
July 31, 2003

Webb Speidermann's Nehemiah-powered latest measures just 7" square and 1.75" tall - that's 178 X 178 X 44mm in metric currency. That's almost too wee.

Webb Speidermann's "Bantam PC"

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The "amPC"
July 31, 2003

Jamie Kitson chose a broken audio amplifier as a base for his Mini-ITX project, and with the help of the built-in heatsink, some home-made vents and a copper sheet, managed to passively cool his Nehemiah M10000 motherboard. His cat likes it.

Jamie Kitson's "amPC"

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The "Spartan Bluebird"
July 25, 2003

Another radio project - this time Garry Buck managed to (just) squeeze his EPIA ME6000 into a 1935 Spartan Bluebird radio. A worrying trend in antique desecration from another crazed Mini-ITXer. Luckily he mistakenly used a replica model. But how long before we see Grandfather Clock PC? Chippendale PC? Rosetta Stone PC?...

Garry Buck's "Spartan Bluebird"

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The "S-CUBE"
July 22, 2003

Sergio Morales' S-CUBE is the 3rd iteration of his "Home Entertainment PC Based All Purpose Machine". Luckily it's his first cube project though, as if combined with others it could become a large weapon of awesome power..

Sergio Morales' S-CUBE

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Tranquil PCs tested to ISO standards
July 22, 2003

Tranquil PC have had their Tranquil Mini-ITX PCs independently tested at an accredited test laboratory in accordance with the ISO 7779 standard and declared the results to full ISO 9296 standard. ISO 9296 is the internationally accepted standard used for the "declaration of noise emission values of computer and business equipment", and ISO 7779 is the standard for the "measurement of airborne noise emitted by computers and business equipment"...

The results are impressive - the ISO 9296 Sound Power Level at idle is 2.9 Bels, peaking at just 3.2 Bels during hard disk access. The measured Sound Pressure Level at normal Operator Position is 16 dB(A) at idle, and 18 db(A) during hard disk access. More details here

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The "EPIA Powered Mantle Radio"
July 20, 2003

Beau Walker built a case for his EPIA ME6000 in the shape of a vintage 1930's style mantle radio, and added some decidedly non-retro features such as silent operation, Compact Flash booting and an LCD display...

Beau Walker's EPIA Powered Mantle Radio

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TDV Vision's Antaur-powered Tablet PC
July 20, 2003

TDV Vision in Taiwan has announced one of the first Antaur-powered Tablet PCs, running at 1.2Ghz and shipping in September. The Antaur is a close relative of the Nehemiah CPU which powers the 1Ghz M10000 (and future) Mini-ITX machines, so we should expect a speed-bumped Nehemiah in approximately the same timeframe. The VS1200XP has a 14.1" touch-panel swivel-style LCD display - and has a rather nice feature list for a machine weighing only 4.07 lbs and costing under a thousand bucks: 30GB hard drive, 256MB memory, built-in digital camera, 4-in-one card reader, Firewire, Ethernet, 56K Modem and 802.11b Wi-Fi.

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The "Guitar Workstation"
July 16, 2003

The large white cable in the center of this picture is a USB connection between an EPIA 800 and a Digitech RPx400 guitar processor. This transmits full duplex audio and MIDI control information to low latency real time processing software written by the project's creator, Jacob Lister...

Jacob Lister's Guitar Workstation

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Mini-ITX timeline postulations...
July 10, 2003

Good news everybody, VIA look to be increasingly concentrating on the weeny EPIA platform and ditching that silly full-sized P4 motherboard business of theirs. VIA have a few interesting EPIA variants on the horizon (though perhaps one previously rumoured one won't make it in the reshuffle). The dual-LAN EPIA CL looks like it will be the first of the new motherboards to reach the market, followed by the PCMCIA/CF enabled EPIA MII a while after that. Further on, we'd expect to see their natty new VT8237 South Bridge utilised in some capacity. After all, who wouldn't want a new chipset with a 200MHz FSB, support for DDR333/400, improved 3D, and support for both MPEG2 and MPEG4? We certainly would. We'll keep our eyes peeled at Computex...

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VIA launches mobile "Antaur" CPU
July 10, 2003

VIA have launched a mobile version of their Nehemiah-core C3 processor (as used in the Nehemiah M10000 Mini-ITX motherboard). The Antaur features the same 16-stage pipeline, SSE multimedia instructions, advanced branch prediction, 64KB L2 cache, data encryption engine and full-speed FPU as the Nehemiah, both in a low profile EBGA package. The main difference is in the power consumption: The C3 typically consumes 11W (15W max), whereas the Antaur consumes 8W (11W max). This cunning feat is achieved by VIA's "PowerSaver 2.0" architecture which reduces the voltage and CPU multiplier (when the CPU isn't under strain) to bring down the power consumption. The C3 and Eden support PowerSaver 1.0, which only controls the multiplier. The Antaur is clearly a broadside against the Centrino market and should mean cheaper low power/long battery life slimline laptops reach the market this year. VIA share a lot of technology between products, so we wouldn't be surprised to see a low power EPIA using the same power saving technology on the market in the future.

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The "Lego 0933 Portable PC"
July 06, 2003

James Watson discovered a slimline DVD drive is exactly 16 Lego bricks wide when constructing his EPIA M9000 powered Lego 0933 Portable PC. The case measures 26 x 24 x 11 bricks in size, and has two small case windows (made from the cockpits of 2 TIE bomber kits!), the DVD drive and a 30Gb hard drive.

James Watson's Lego 0933 Portable PC

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