Wednesday, October 14, 2009

nanoPC: near completion

As you can see from the pictures, my nanoPC is now assembled. I still need to add a remote control and a fan controller for the CPU fan. I had a lot of problems installing the components because the case is so small. If you're using a SATA hard drive, installation will be more difficult because the SATA connector sticks out more than a flat IDE cable connector. Forget the angled connectors as there is not enough space between the bottom of the case and the hard drive so it simply won't fit. I believe the same goes for round IDE cables.

The biggest problem of all was the supplied ATX cable which comes with a full-size 20-pin ATX connector. Why they don't supply you with this cable is beyond me. It is inexpensive and clearly takes up much less space in the already crowded case. On a side note, I managed to cram an Intel miniPCI wireless card in there. In order to do that, I had to shorten the screws which stick out from the bottom of the case.

As for the OS, I'm going to give Ubuntu 9.04 a try. Hopefully, hardware is well supported. Keep your fingers crossed!



2 comments:

tomacintosh said...

Very nice, what spec are these? Are they a 1GHz CPU?

Mayhem said...

Thanks! It's a 1GHz Via Eden-N CPU paired with Via CN400 North Bridge. The computer has 1GB of RAM and a 120GB hard drive. Still haven't tested it in practice as I managed to brick the BIOS :) Waiting for a new mainboard atm.