Home | News Archive | December 2002

Those crazy Japanese fools!
December 20, 2002

Courtesy of our friends at the inquirer, possibly the most spherical of all the Mini-ITX mods we've seen so far. Only in Japan.

Ridiculous Spherical Mini-ITX PCs at AKIBA PC Hotline!

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Morex Cubid 2699R - due in 2003
December 18, 2002

Morex Information Ent., Co., Ltd have had a lot of success with their 26xx series of Mini-ITX cases. By our calculations, their forthcoming 2699 case will be number 3 and a half. The 2677 was available almost since the EPIA motherboards hit the scene, the 2677R added a riser card and the 2688R added front-mounting USB ports. The 2699 (presumably R?) cases once again are available in both black and white, and have front-mounting USB 2.0 and Firewire sockets. The 2699R is designed specifically for the EPIA M. We liked the round buttons on the 2677, but that's progress for you. It'll be available in early 2003. Here's a picture for you.

Product details for Morex's Cubid 2699R

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EPIA M Reviews and Links - updated
December 12, 2002, Updated January 13, 2003

Whilst we've been busy decorating our mince pies and baking christmas trees, other more worthy sites have actually produced some decent EPIA M reviews and articles. Here's what we found:

VIA EPIA M9000 Review at Techseekers.net (NEW)

VIA EPIA M9000 Review at TweakNews.net (NEW)

VIA EPIA M9000 Review at silentpcreview.com

VIA EPIA M9000 Review at tweakers.net (Dutch)

VIA EPIA-M Review at x86-secret.com (French)

EPIA-M "Dream Catalyst" article at ViaArena.com

EPIA-M Article at digit-life.com

and whilst we're at it...

VIA's EPIA M motherboard page and driver page

VIAArena's EPIA and EPIA-M driver page (particularly useful for Linux)

Win EPIA M goodies at VIAArena...

...but use this link to enter (till they fix their page)

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Fitting the EPIA M into a Cubid Case
December 09, 2002

The new EPIA M motherboards (aka square peg) unfortunately don't fit into most existing EPIA cases (aka round holes). Undeterred, and just a few days after they arrived in the stores, we've already received two guides on how to fit an M into a Cubid case - including a rather good one from the very hairy linux god, Alan Cox. As Alan says "Anything fits if you use a hacksaw"...

Fitting an EPIA M into a Cubid 2677 or 2688 Case

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EPIA M Case from Chyang Fun
December 06, 2002

Chyang Fun Industry Co, Ltd, Taiwan, makers of the rather marvellous EPIA compatible MiniCube case (aka the CF-7989) have announced the CF-S668W case. Constructed from Aluminium and Perspex and measuring 280 x 110 x 375mm, the CF-S668W (we haven't thought of a cool sounding name for it yet..) takes a full size 5.25" CD/DVD drive and an internal 3.5" hard drive. It has a 150W PSU, 2 x front mounted USB ports and 1 x front mounted Firewire port (not shown in this early press picture, but underneath the mic and headphone sockets). Cooling is provided inside by the PSU fan and a "cross-flow fan", which looks like it would be more in place in a paddleboat on the Mississippi. The case has two large perspex sheets top and bottom and a perspex front panel. Initial supplies should become available early next year. Chyang Fun call this the "E-Note", and there will also be a Black version, presumably, the CF-S668B..?

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The "ToAsTOr"
December 02, 2002

Joe Klingler stuffed an EPIA motherboard into the crumb tray of a 1200W 1960 General Electric toaster to make a rather shiny ToasterPC. The toaster salesman thought he was making a robot. Not such a bad idea.. ;)

Joe Klingler's ToAsTOr

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