VIA EPIA NL Motherboard

I didn't know if people had seen this board, so I thought I would mention it. It looks like a great starting point for a new indash pc.

Highlights (to me at least ):
12cm X 12cm
44 pin IDE header (Yay Notebook drives!)
10/100 LAN
No ports on the back! Instead there are headers to attach everything, PS/2, Video, LAN, USB. Easy to modify to go to docking connector?

While I know I will not be able to create anything nearly as good as the empeg software, I think this board may be a great place to start in creating a small in-dash removable PC. I love that the empeg is removable, and would want any in-dash PC to do the same. I'm thinking of getting one to see what I can put together. The biggest hurdle is the heatsink is huge! Makes fitting it all in an DIN enclosure more difficult!

Edit: Whoops! Forgot product link!

Are they actually available though? They announced the EPIA-N board (Nano-ITX like this one) something like 2 years ago and only now is it becoming available. I'm pretty keen to do up a new car PC while car is not being driven (no license )

I love my empeg, but I want to add navigation (amongst other things).

It looks like there are some available already.

http://mini-itx.com/store/?c=26#epianl

That's the site I saw them for sale at. Like you said, some are available. I was telling a cow-orker about it, and we were bouncing ideas off each other. You can have the TV out/composite drive a LCD touchscreen, and use the 15 pin VGA to control a front panel LCD much like the empegs display (full color though of course ). Really for a custom in-dash computer I think this board shows so much potential as an off the shelf part.

www.linitx.com claim to have 3 Nano models in stock, i'm giving some serious thought to getting one for a project at work.

Note that they say

"1Ghz fan-cooled VIA Luke CoreFusion™ Processor"

eventhough none of the pictures ever show a fan or a heatsink. I think this is quite misleading personally. They did the same with the inital pictures of the Epia-N board and it has a huge heatsink (relatively).

Edit: It appears the "NL8000E" model is fanless though.

Mini-itx.com did a review of the EPIA N10000 (note the difference between the N and the NL is the rear connectors). According to them the noise was about 20dBA, so I don't think it's anything to worry about.

I do agree though, that heatsink is huge. I think to get the motherboard, a slimline DVD, and a 2.5" HDD all in a single DIN enclosure you would have to modify the heatsink... a little grinding should do!

BTW, these guys make a pretty cool power supply for the nano-ITX motherboards. But unfortunately they need to make a new design to fit the boards.

Quote:

BTW, these guys make a pretty cool power supply for the nano-ITX motherboards. But unfortunately they need to make a new design to fit the boards.

I have a snap-on regulator package (aka. "PSU") like that on my CL6000E mini-ITX board (http://rtr.ca/) and it's very nice. That board is 600Mhz fan-less, and it's great. The newer CPUs may be a bit faster per-clock, and seem to go up to 800Mhz (and faster?) without fans.

Cheers