Procase (www.procase.co.nz) sell a box with a 12V DC 55W PSU for the EPIA, EPIA-V or the EPIA-M boards. They're a *slightly* different form so minor acse layout changes. There is an external 240V adaptor, and they only take slimline CD/DVD drives. They will sell to the public direct I beleive, or there are some resellers around NZ.
This means the best solution IMHO would be an external USB casing that you can stick a normal cdrom in (why oh why did I only think of this now!) The FIC Falcons are not bad, I've got one myself (100% linux of course), but the PSU is _NOISY_ (even with the "noise reducer" sticker on the PSU) - My girlfriends P4 is slightly quieter. I've since moved my falcon case inside the cupboard of my desk in an attempt to quiet it. I use a low profile GF2MX PCI video card in my falcon for Video, and TV-Out and I'm waiting on Dove to get some of the low profile GF4 PCI cards in so I can upgrade to one of those. The original falcon didnt ship with TVOut but the new one does (not sure if Dove is stocking it yet though) Theres a lot more support for the EPIA boards in the 2.6 kernel, especially with some of the more fanciful features such as cpu power saving. Although its all nice and good, modding an XBox to run with the linux bios is definetly a cheaper option if its just for TV/PVR. I dont know how fast it would be though, if you put in an evolution-x bios then you can run both XBox Media player (all dvd, cd, vcd, formats), Linux and XBox games too. The other option is a Shuttle PC, an IR remote control is available for these as well, I havent looked at it but presumably its going to be USB so could run on any PC not just the shuttle. You've got more flexibility with these than the VIA solution, but also higher power consumption and price. A quick search on pricespy for EPIA-M gives Ascent and SmartPC Hamilton the best pricing, depending on your choice of the 1Ghz in PC133 or DDR you'll pay something like $250-$350. Check www.ascent.co.nz for pricing. Procase slimline case and PSU will set you back $160-200 depending where you get it from. Direct from procase is the cheapest. The EPIA-V10000 is slightly cheaper, and takes PC133 instead of DDR. Overall I'd have to say the VIA boards are very nice to use, I've had no real problems with them at all and we've sold a few Falcons through work as desktops, and I use a Falcon as my own desktop. The brilliance for me in them is the portability of a laptop (fits in a backpack) at a much cheaper price. I cart mine to work, friends places with no problems. Video performance of the 933Mhz is acceptable with a GF2 (_just_ bareable with the onboard video), but the increased cache in the new Nehemiah core, and the DDR option should speed things up considerably. And getting the hardware decoder chip to work would be a bonus as well. -- Sascha Beaumont <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
