This article outlines the designing and building of a Mini-ITX computer which runs off of a USB flash drive. The designer’s goal was to build a system which was silent and as simple as possible. In the end it was little more than a USB drive, a VIA motherboard, and a case. Puppy Linux was used for an operating system due to its light weight and ability to boot off of a USB drive.
I would have gone with a compact flash card in an IDE adapter. Not only cheap and silent, but works just like a real hard drive from the computers perspective, and doesn’t use a USB port or stick out.
Yeah, but since he had spare USB drives, that way was cheaper.
Hmmm no. A DOC would be even cheaper yet (and no having to mount the CF adapter anywhere).
>In the end it was little more than a USB drive, a VIA motherboard, and a case.
It didn’t need a processor or memory? Neat
VIA motherboards come with CPUs included. Fancy that!
My first thought would have been to go completely diskless and do everything over NFS since there is obviously networking involved anyway.
Another possibility would be to use SunRay (which allows either Solaris or Linux as the OS and through use of things like Citrix or Tarantella can display Windows XP as well), since the SunRay has no move parts. Of course going with SunRay would have take the fun out of the DIY.
The processor is soldered on the VIA motherboards. So, he used a processor, but they do not come with on board memory.
Uhh….the motherboard has a built-in CF Flash reader in the back under the PCMCIA slot.
I just bought a 1GB CF card for $45. I’m sure with a little research he could find on that would be bootable for sure for under $60 and get rid of that USB thumb drive eye sore.
I’d guarantee a 3.5″ hard drive could do some severe damage to a 60W power supply. Silverstone should really have considered only allowing for a 2.5″ drive to be put in that case.
Looks nice otherwise, I could seriously consider using a fanless epia board for building a custom internal linux based router for work using gigabit & a CF card.
— “Uhh….the motherboard has a built-in CF Flash reader in the back under the PCMCIA slot.”
Even better!
— “I’d guarantee a 3.5″ hard drive could do some severe damage to a 60W power supply.”
I doubt that would be a worry. I think you overestimate the consumption of the EPIA board and CPU. It is WAY LOW, leaving plenty for the hard drive.
— “Looks nice otherwise, I could seriously consider using a fanless epia board for building a custom internal linux based router for work using gigabit & a CF card.”
Somthing Ive wanted to do also. In fact, if you don’t need gigabit, they even have a board with dual 10/100 ethernet ports, which means no need for an expansion card, so you can use a shorter case.
— “I’d guarantee a 3.5″ hard drive could do some severe damage to a 60W power supply.”
> I doubt that would be a worry. I think you overestimate the consumption of the EPIA board and CPU. It is WAY LOW, leaving plenty for the hard drive.
The amount of power used by a DVD-R & 3.5″ 7200rpm drive used together (in case of a rip or something) could end up demanding 35 of those 60 available watts. That makes things a abit too close for comfort.
I was hoping for something small, cheap, and quiet. I checked online and found the prices for some of components listed and they are not what I would consider cheap for the performance.
The MII10000 isnt as cheap as I would hope pricewatch shows $188-205, case $180-$220, RAM $50-60, and USB Key $35 kinda adds up to $458 – $515 I hope I am off on the price. But you could get a mac mini thats smaller quieter and has a DVD/CD-RW, harddrive and OSX or Linux if you want to install it. Only issue would be connecting it to a TV which is fine for those that have DVI inputs like myself.
You could save $100 or more if you went for a cheaper case. However the aliminum Silverstone cases are, in my opinion, a lot classier than than the Mac Mini cases. It’s just a question of what your priorities are.
Well it probably is a very nice case. A bit pricy is all. When it comes to size though the mini is only 1/3-1/4th the volume.
I actually built a similar box about a year ago but I added a hard drive and DVD RW and made it completely fanless. I started with an Epia ME6000 (600 MHz fanless Epia board) and used a Silverstone LC03 which is a full-sized ATX case but that’s the look I wanted (Silverstone is expensive but, in my opinion, well worth it) and a fanless 80 W power supply. I added 256 MB of RAM, an 80 GB hard drive, and a DVD drive.
I put Windows XP Home on it and although I can already feel the flames coming (Windows is evil and all that), I did it because I couldn’t get the display to work correctly on any flavor of Linux but Gentoo and that’s just too much work (especially over a dialup connection). On the bright side, I hooked it up to my reciever and have been using is as a combination pc/music server. I simply loaded up iTunes and ripped a bunch of my CDs to it. Now I can have it play long sets of music as well as basic computer functionality. It’s a great little box for the living room and super quiet. I’ve been running it 24×7 for about a year with no problems.
Where did you find an 80w fanless power supply? I’ve been looking for something like that!
You can find them at idotpc.com (http://www.idotpc.com/TheStore/Peripheral/case/Default_ps_itx.asp?C…). The one I got is the PW70A which is actually a 100 Watt power supply. You have to add an AC adapter to it but it’s been working great for me.
Could this have been done using wireless networking and a boot prom to boot from a server? I don’t know enough about wireless networking or how it can be configured before the OS comes up. Or is that something that the net boot prom would handle?
But I agree with the other poster: these things are cute, but not “cheap”. Space seems to come at a premium.
Shame, really.
those mini systems are far from cheap. But they are neat.
You can get a pre-made system like this that helps out a linux distro in the process by getting the one offered at damnsmalllinux.org site.