Quote: Originally Posted by
brucedog 
21k, you're a real man for all that. You sure gave it a VERY fair try.
OK, let's all cry together, or if you wish, comiserate.
I bought the a Via MB in Voom case "Beginner's Special", and after a LOT of back and forth on the phone, and three times shipping back and forth...gave up!
Fortunately, I am obsessive-compulsive....
Went with what I
know, maybe considering something more carpc-ish in future...
Check out my specs, but basically, I have a inverter and new Compaq
desktop w/ Vista.
Life is pertty good wit dat, but YES, justa wee bit of inverter whine - generally not heard when muzik starts. Don't care a whit about heat or inefficiency.
Drilled holes in pc case to mount nice fold-down handle from Parts Express. Shook said case a bit to be sure no metal flakes sneaked through barrier. OOOOOps!
Re-started pc - you ever hear that horrible metal-on-metal sound of a HD destroying itself? Yep. Am in process of re-ripping about 200 cd's, and re-installing eveything, plus config'g to my likes. Not fun.
Sometimes do you wonder what it is about the weird disasters of getting a carpc up and running?? I dunno........
Well this is the 3rd iteration of the CarPC. I am an efficiency nut / energy saving environmentalist. I dont hug trees, but I do drive a 32-42 mpg car and have CFL bulbs and such. Small stuff.
So Version #1 was with a M10k while in high school. Worked great. Got to university, needed to have AutoCAD and Photoshop 7 and now CS2 in the car so I can work while waiting for one of the 1500 parking spaces for the 4000 students to open up so I can get to class. So I moved to the P4-M. It is plenty fast, but not efficient enough for me, as I am pushing the M2 to the max, and the Commell board isn't my favourite. That and as with all carPC's, it is never finished, only between upgrades. So my quest for the C2D ITX formfactor CarPC started when I got back from vacation.
I know I can use a desktop, and an inverter. I dont want to as I personally feel that is half-assed. Also, I already own an M2-ATX which works great, and recently a VoomPC2 case I got from the mp3car store (very fast and awesome btw
). So I am using the itx, dc-dc method, just the actual mobo and cpu are holding me up now...
I hope this new board works out for sure.
Quote: Originally Posted by
galvitron Wow...fun!
Now I know what motherboard NOT to buy
Watch it end up being a jumper setting or something. That kind of stuff happens to me just when I start to think I am a computer building master...
Jumpers were like #3 on my list. Not sure if it is a pro or a con, but there arent many jumpers on the board that relate to hardware booting, but there are a lot of "extra" headers. For instance, a
very annoying flaw of this motherboard is that it has no backpanel PS2 connector. I use a PS2 mouse and a PS2 keyboard in the house as most geeks do because we all know USB support while digging around the BIOS or other low-low-low-level things is spotty at best. So with this board there is a header that is 6 pins by 1 pin, that connects to a PS2 connector through the header port... wtf?!
Anyways, in the manual that was clearly written by some chinese guy and an online translator there is no direction to plug it in. I have read other reviews and complaints of this while searching for a possible solution to this mobo crisis. Some people have even blown up their keyboard by reversing the polarity. Luckily I either guessed correctly, or my 1980's IBM full metal 15 pound keyboard with the original big *** PS2 connector (like 1" in diameter) is very resiliant.
Anyways, back to the headers, there are quite a few for LVDS settings, but not much else of use. Well USB of course.
It seems like a great little board, but it suffers greatly from problems obviously. I still cannot say for sure if it is a very bad manufacturing process, very short list of compatible components, or very bad luck getting all x7 sticks of RAM and x2 CPUs dead on arrival.