Hardware Talk :: Via SP13000 - suitable or not?



Hi All

I discovered DSL a few weeks ago and I've been running it on a Coppermine PIII laptop with toram.  Absolutely staggering - so quick it brings a new meaning to "pre-emptive" multitasking!

Anyway, laptop is 4yrs old, noisy and worn out so I want to replace it with an SP13000, 1GB RAM, large hdd for bittorrenting and a Hoojum Cubit3 case.  DSL will be live-CD'd or from USB if I can do it.  

I was about to order all this and then spotted on Viaarena that VIA support for Linux is "non-existent."  This machine will not be running M$ as it will be my day-to-day machine:  the heavy stuff will be done on a dual Opteron 275 system with 8GB RAM and XP64.

The DamnSmallMachine is for me a proof of concept that DSL works on these platforms, but does anyone have any experience with the SP13000?

Viaarena also makes out that most of the problems are to do with Kernel 2.6 so...

Does DSL work well with this hardware or should I look at the more expensive option of a Pentium M system?

Thanks in advance

Neil
I haven't tested the SPs yet with DSL.  But I am getting a few in stock soon and I will see how they run.  So far all Via mini-itx boards I've tested have booted fine even from USB.

I can verify these models:
5000
800
ME 6000
PD 10000
MII 6000
M10000

I don't see an reason why the SP series will act any different from looking at the specks.
Neil,

I can confirm the SP 1300 is a cracking wee piece of hardware.

I got mine yesterday and am posting this with DSL / Firefox running off a 512Mb Kingston USB stick and 1Gb RAM.

Monitor is a Viewsonic VX924 (on the analog input).  Screen resolution is fine at 1280 x 1024.

At the moment I have it in a giant Chenbro case and it looks like a speck in the corner!  Needed it though as I haven't got an on board PSU / power brick combo for it yet (Christmas is coming though).

One point worth mentioning is the CPU fan.  I thought it was a bit noisy so I replaced it with a fan from the rear of a hot swap disk caddy.  Much quieter.

Neil. (aka gadgetboy)
I can verify the MII 12000 woring perfectly and now teh via drivers are opensource  :p

original here.