John's "cheap little mini"

Forum: User Feedback
Topic: John's "cheap little mini"
started by: Robocoastie

Posted by Robocoastie on Oct. 21 2004,05:37

John,

how did you make an on/off button for your "cheap little mini" on the web site?Is the wire in the pictures it or is that the power supply connector? If so, did you just rip it from an existing computer case or order it from some mysterious parts supplier (whom I'd love to know I've been trying to figure out where to get widgets like that from).

Also, what is under the motherboard to hold it off the bottom plexiglass; or is it sitting on the plexiglass since its not a conductor anyway? Or did you drill and tap the plexiglass for motherboard/case brass screws?

thanks a bunch,

Rob

Posted by AwPhuch on Oct. 21 2004,15:53

Quote (Robocoastie @ Oct. 21 2004,01:37)

HUH?

Got a link/url so we can see??

Brian
AwPhuch

Posted by roadie on Oct. 21 2004,15:58

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/mini.html

Nice lil box

Posted by AwPhuch on Oct. 21 2004,16:15

Most SCHWEET!!!!!!!!!!!!

Brian
AwPhuch

Posted by Del on Oct. 21 2004,20:58

The wire you see in the pics is for the mains to 12v adaptor for the mini power supply.

Any old momentary button will work for a power and/or reset. You can also use any old switch, just remember to flip-on-flip-off, because if you just flip it on and leave it bad things can happen.

Looks to me like the power (and possibly reset) switch(es) of John's mini are cleverly disguised as the same cap nuts that hold the whole box together (see photo).

Posted by Robocoastie on Oct. 21 2004,23:21

Thanks Del.

I did wonder what those two nuts were for, that explains it. very clever indeed.

Rob

Posted by somerville32@hotmail.com on Oct. 21 2004,23:52

Very neat!

~Me

Posted by panama on Oct. 22 2004,01:33

He oughta put THOSE up for sale too!!

Posted by ico2 on Oct. 22 2004,15:27

ico2 is determined to create something better when he buys one of those boards (nano itx (or is that just a mini-itx (can't see from the picture)))

Posted by Robocoastie on Oct. 22 2004,18:13

Quote (panama @ Oct. 21 2004,21:33)

He oughta put THOSE up for sale too!!

no doubt. I bet pcs made like that would fetch a nice sum on ebay

. It reminds me of the old c64's, where you just added externally to it any devices one needs. And now that we have USB 2 and firewire we can finally build pcs like that again so our burners, tv/capture devices can be in easy to get at spots rather than always attached to a tower where we have to lean down to reach etc...

I read on the viatech site yesterday that they have a P4 800mhz bus mini-itx out now that still can use these small power supplies. Also sometime in 2005 they plan on rolling out their own 64bit processor for these boards using AMD's instruction set.

Posted by Rapidweather on Oct. 22 2004,22:04

And the mesh around the sides will surely keep all but the smallest of critters from
crawling inside to stay warm!
---

Posted by BobH on Oct. 25 2004,17:55

I've been "playing" with DSL for several months, and now have been bitten by the mini-ITX bug as well. I have ordered the IDE/CF adapter from John in the past, and now just orderd the DC power supplie(s) to make my ME6000 truly silent.

Robocoastie's comment about comparing it to a C64 reminds me of my early days with my Apple II (in the spring of 1978) and how much I enjoyed computing.

Less is more, both with DSL, mini-ITX, and NOISE. Thanks John (and all), for helping to make computing fun again. (Oh, and ship my quiet power supply so I can dump this Damn Noisy ATX thing!)

Bob H.

P.S. John, you should put something in your "cheap little mini" picture to show how small it actually is.

Posted by msuho on Oct. 25 2004,19:03

I'm not sure that this is the right place to ask, but it's the only min-itx thread I see going on the forum. If the forums gods feel it belongs elsewhere, please be my guest & move it.

I too am enamoured with the thought of a small, quite, not terribly hot box running DSL. I'm trying to figure out what parts would go into a box, and was wondering:
- The 3677 & 3688 cases talk about "low height" memory. Anybody know what that means?

- I'm considering a DSL mini itx system that would no have it's own monitor & keyboard: it would be accessed over a network. Is the DSL (or KNOPPIX, or Debian) kernel that's in the default distribution going to boot OK if there's no monitor or keyboard attached? One Linux book I have says that I'd need to build a kernel with special options (like serial console) to do this.

I know it's not DSL- maybe we need a mini-itx, or DSL on mini-itx, subforum.

Thanks,

Mark

Posted by Robocoastie on Oct. 25 2004,21:34

hmm that's fascinating Mark, I've wondered how good the floating point is on these via cpus to determine if they'd be good for folding@home operations. If they were at least "average" at it this could be a cool way to do admin on them - thru the network. I don't know why one couldn't it shouldn't be much didn't than telnetting into it somehow.

**edit/add**

I found out on a mini-itx enthusiast site that they wouldn't work very well at all for f@h or other floating point intensive apps (like games). That's fine though they make great general purpose computers.

Posted by AwPhuch on Oct. 26 2004,14:24

What are the physical dimentions of the box?

How hard would it be to slap a small laptop HD in that?
Is there a dual nic board like that one out there???

Brian
AwPhuch

Posted by Robocoastie on Oct. 26 2004,21:37

< This one > has two ethernet ports.

I think you could make it slightly larger to fit a harddrive its housing internal power supplies that keeps pc's looking like suitcases. Personally if I were to build it I'd still use a flashcard for the OS and use external USB 2.0 harddrive for extra storage, can even add a cd/rw that way if you want but will just need one of the bigger power adapters listed.

Posted by Del on Oct. 27 2004,03:24

msuho,
To boot with no monitor you may need something like < this >. Sorry, can't help much with the keyboard though.

AwPhuc,
Robocoastie already linked the TC epia board. Also check out < http://www.mini-itx.com/ > for a whole host of doowhackeys for epias, including notebook hdd and adaptors to run them.

Posted by John on Nov. 09 2004,05:09

The buttons could be found for a few dollars on the net, try searching for 'atx push button power switch' in google. The mesh is called 'rain gutter screen,' you can find it at a hardware store. The board has the foam pad under it and is being held by the plastic rivets sold in those motherboard screw kits.

You can see them in this pic:
< http://hovyo.com/ebay/cab-gres/cab_3.gif >

The total of the case components was under $15, and could be done for even less.

Posted by Robocoastie on Nov. 09 2004,07:06

thanks for the info John.

Posted by libretto on Nov. 09 2004,16:11

msuho, if you mean the Morex Cubid 3688, thats the case I've got. I have used normal sized RAM. If you want to see some photos search the forum with my login name and find my webserver posts.

Don't know about having no keyboard connected. But not having a monitor shouldn't be a problem. As long as you set the machine to go straight into a terminal (ie not go to the desktop) it should be alright. I'll admit im still a bit of a noob so I may be wrong :;):

Eventually....., I may get round to trying this < lcdproc.org >. It would be soo cool to have an LCD terminal on the DSL box. I've got a large LCD display panel, and found someones code to run the display the linux terminal in that! < LCD virtual console > :laugh: