Hard to be impressed with small builds today considering what a flagship phone is capable of in that tiny package.
So it really does look exactly like a spare case and no actual computer present.
I emailed the author to get the modified bootloader source code that he mentions at the end to allow the dual boot between XP and red-hat via a hardware switch. It was magic to me at the time as a 13 year old! I probably still have the code somewhere.
There was something special about Mini-ITX machines at the time, nothing was that small.
A bit off topic, but I also loved the fact that the website remains like an antique website from that era (I know the article is from 2003 but the design is clearly not "modern"). I am going to say something probably stupid, but I feel there is a correlation between old/vintage design = good content.
I built a Shuttle xpc cube in 2008. I though that was tiny. I specifically used a laptop hard drive to reduce noice.
I think it was this exact model: https://www.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/s/o2HKpeLmrA
It was my firts step away from windows. I ran ubuntu on it a couple of years until I switched to macos to do ios dev.
Bought it at the local PC shop
Played Rollercoaster Tycoon, CD-ROM straight from it's huge box, on it 'til my fingers bled
Was the summer of '99
MicroATX motherboards are usually cheaper than ATX or MiniITX and you can typically use normal PSUs and optical drives instead small ones that are more expensive and have fewer options.
You can always put a mini ITX board in a full size ATX case if you want though...
I genuinely miss that era of computing. Simpler, more fun, and with way more but not as crippling problems (except Linux support and WinModem. I'm glad that we're past that).
:)
I was reusing about 40 kg of Via Eden Esther 3 years ago, and they hang under certain conditions when the software uses SSE2 instructions.
Had to rebuild the kernel and all the software in 'pentium4' mode, to make it work without SSE2.
I had this issue on my VIA Nano U2250 server in online.net as well back in 2013 :)
I still have one of those C3 embedded aluminium boxes with a pass-through Ethernet bypass port pair. I ran it as a transparent bridging FW, when power went, it turned into a coupler. This is what got me using pfSense.
Another thing VIA C3 had was the integrated Padlock crypto engine, and this was way before AES-NI, supported on both Linux and BSDs. I remember benchmarking SSL against contemporary Xeons at the time and it wasn't even apples and oranges, it was more like tar and fibre optics. Cisco's AIM module throughput at the time felt laughable in comparison.
Atom was OK, but today Intel's N-series are proving great and we are completely spoilt for choice in terms of good, cheap platforms available.
For which I wrote the Linux column for the mag's first year. :-)
I'm so glad we stopped turning every hobby into an offshoot of modded car culture. I can't unhear the tokyo drift theme every time I'm reminded of this era.
I got my first real Pentium
Bought it at the local shop
Played Quake till my fingers ached
Was the summer of '99
Me and some guys from school
Had a LAN and we played real hard
Jonny lost, the network failed
Should've upgraded our thinnet
Oh, when I look back now
Ninety-eight was more fun than XP
And if I had the choice
My kids wouldn't be stuck with chromebooks
I really miss my old PC
More like, "back when software came in physical media".
Putting the CD in the drive, the installation starts, and that wow effect starting the game, the hard disk clicking like crazy.
Padlock hash engine can only hash the whole data, not a block of data (not init + update + update + ... + final), so the OpenSSL developer hacked up the MMU to prevent the CPU from accessing next regions and terminate the processing, emulating update() call :)