Zotac's Ion Board On Windows 7: Nvidia Re-Arms Intel’s Atom - compatability?

[rocketlynx]

Well we got our fanless Zotac 230 Ion board today and we are really very impressed indeed. As its Ion based it really is as compatible as the Revo...so we just added it to a Core and it just worked. As you can see from the psecs/pic the Zotac has an incredible array of I/O fro such a tiny little mobo...and its BIOS is also equally well equipped with a very rich set of features & capabilities. As with the Revo we have both PCM & Dolby Digital/DTS working over the HDMI port very nicely...on the Zotac of course you have the option of S/pdif (Coax/Optical) too. The Zotac has VGA, DVI & HDMI and the picture quality out of each is excellent.

Performance wise it was impossible to say whether the Revo or Zotac performed better or worse than one another...they were equally good in this respect.

All the best

Andrew

Has there been any changes since the above quoted statement?  I'm looking to order one.  Can you please tell me your exact model of success since there are several variations of this board?

Regards,
Charles

[totallymaxed]

Well we got our fanless Zotac 230 Ion board today and we are really very impressed indeed. As its Ion based it really is as compatible as the Revo...so we just added it to a Core and it just worked. As you can see from the psecs/pic the Zotac has an incredible array of I/O fro such a tiny little mobo...and its BIOS is also equally well equipped with a very rich set of features & capabilities. As with the Revo we have both PCM & Dolby Digital/DTS working over the HDMI port very nicely...on the Zotac of course you have the option of S/pdif (Coax/Optical) too. The Zotac has VGA, DVI & HDMI and the picture quality out of each is excellent.

Performance wise it was impossible to say whether the Revo or Zotac performed better or worse than one another...they were equally good in this respect.

All the best

Andrew

Has there been any changes since the above quoted statement?  I'm looking to order one.  Can you please tell me your exact model of success since there are several variations of this board?

Regards,
Charles

Both the Zotac-230 and the Zotac-330 motherboards work well. You will have to do the usual NIC fixes in initramfs and upgrade to to the nVidia 180.51 and alsa 1.0.19 drivers etc. In fact all the Ion motherboards tested so far work excellently.

Look for Zotac ION-ITX-A & Zotac ION-ITX-B boards.

Andrew

[wierdbeard65]

The real issue to me is that ITX cases are either not suited to diskless MDs or are overpriced or both.  I'm willing to have an adventure to save that money.  If you have better suggestions, speak

I like the look of http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=54

Reasonable price, VESA mounting if you want, all the connections hidden away (again, if you want) so good looking.

HTH

[rocketlynx]

The real issue to me is that ITX cases are either not suited to diskless MDs or are overpriced or both.  I'm willing to have an adventure to save that money.  If you have better suggestions, speak

I like the look of http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=54

Reasonable price, VESA mounting if you want, all the connections hidden away (again, if you want) so good looking.

HTH

Thanks wierdbeard65,  I also like that enclosure the best.  I was really talking about the specific model of the Motherboard.

Thanks

[wierdbeard65]

Thanks wierdbeard65,  I also like that enclosure the best.  I was really talking about the specific model of the Motherboard.

I accept that and it's available bundled http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=53#ION-ITX-B-may-2009-bundle

I was, however, actually responding to the guy who wanted to cut up a cash-box to make a case because he wasn't keen on the cases available... 

[rocketlynx]

Thanks wierdbeard65,  I also like that enclosure the best.  I was really talking about the specific model of the Motherboard.

I accept that and it's available bundled http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=53#ION-ITX-B-may-2009-bundle

I was, however, actually responding to the guy who wanted to cut up a cash-box to make a case because he wasn't keen on the cases available... 

Great deal!  I missed that bundle on the site.  Thanks, Charles

[ste_b_79]

Can this be used as a hybrid core?

I am thinking of purchasing this bundle (Zotac ION-ITX-A Wi-Fi / M350 Mini-ITX Case / RAM Offer Bundle), and am just wondering about the need for 2 NICs?

I suppose I could purchase a USB NIC.

I know this has Wi-Fi and 1 NIC, but I want to use 2 NICs and not Wireless.

[wierdbeard65]

I e-mailed them and asked about expansion cards. Unfortunately, that case has no room for any PCI cards, so you TV capture, 2nd NIC etc etc would all have to be USB. Also, there isn't a great deal of space for HDDs.

Personally, I reckon it'd make a great MD, but Hybrid? Hummm

[patmankn]

hybriod shoudl be fine, as long as you have you don't want to attach to much stuff.
Whats the purpose of sth. small, when anything else is attached via USB like HD, TV etc...

[totallymaxed]

Andrew,

I started researching these little guys a few days ago.  I'm certainly excited about them.  The Atom 230s are available here now.  Do you think it's worth waiting/paying for the 330s?

Also, an odd question but how high is the board including the exposed part of the mounting screws and ram?  It looks like the heatsink is nearly as high as the IO panel but not quite there.  I'm thinking of squeezing one into one of these http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0013FGYTC/.

We have just been testing the Zotac Atom330/Ion motherboard under 0810 alpha and using the nVidia vdpau api to get full HD acceleration. After some pointers to a patched MythTV 0.21 from niz23 we have it working very nicely on the Zotac330 board. We have only tested the BBC HD channel on Freesat which is broadcast in 1080i - results so far are that the 330 will deliver flawless playback of the BBC HD channel. The only limitation in MythTV currently when using vdpau is that the current version of the drive cannot handle more than a single video stream at the same time...so mythTV's PIP capability in the Live TV view or in the EPG are not available. But the actual playback performance is truly impressive and really silky smooth. In tests so far we have seen an average processor load of 22-25% when displaying the BBC HD channel stream.

Here is the url to the patched MythTV with vdpau (0804, 0810 & 0904 versions are available here)  http://avenard.com/media/Ubuntu_Repository/Ubuntu_Repository.html

More on this after we test a little more.

All the best

Andrew

[sp00nhead]

cool, bbcHD... hum tempting next buy, What tv card you using?

[totallymaxed]

cool, bbcHD... hum tempting next buy, What tv card you using?

The DVBworld HD-2104...see my Wiki page on it; http://wiki.linuxmce.com/index.php/DVBworld_HD-2104-USB-S2

Andrew

[krys]

Andrew,
Is that box similar to the HD homerun in that it sends the video feed to LMCE via ethernet? or is there an av output on it somewhere?
-Krys

[totallymaxed]

Andrew,
Is that box similar to the HD homerun in that it sends the video feed to LinuxMCE via ethernet? or is there an av output on it somewhere?
-Krys

No the DVBworld HD-2104 is a USB based DVB-S tuner...it connects to a USB2.0 port. This isnot a devices that connects to a LAN like the HDHomerun....and no there is no AV output on this tuner.

Andrew

[Pnuts]

Andrew,
Is that box similar to the HD homerun in that it sends the video feed to LinuxMCE via ethernet? or is there an av output on it somewhere?
-Krys

No the DVBworld HD-2104 is a USB based DVB-S tuner...it connects to a USB2.0 port. This isnot a devices that connects to a LAN like the HDHomerun....and no there is no AV output on this tuner.

Andrew

With that in mind, USB uses the CPU directly, the more mb/s through the usb connection, the more the cpu works, so with a non-usb tuner, your cpu results would be lower.