[Coco] Smallest CoCo ever "re-created"??

[Frank Swygert]

Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2012 17:39:29 -0800
From: Steve Bjork<6809er at srbsoftware.com>

You are looking at a 6+ year old board.  (VIA / VPSD EPIA-MII12000)

There are many newer boards that are smaller with more power.

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This and the comment about it being a surplus item are both true. Newer, more powerful Mini ITX and Atom boards the same size (and some smaller) came out and made this on less desirable. I hesitate to say "obsolete", as for the purposes of being a CoCo emulator base or drivewire server, it would fit the bill nicely. The price is still pretty darn good. Newegg.com has one Atom boards for $49.95 (+$6-7 shipping) that supports more memory (up to 16GB), but has no expansion slot. I don't know how the Atom compares to the VIA C3 chip. They have a couple other boards, but they don't have processors on them. The cheapest VIA board they have is $59 (+$7 shipping). It's a bit faster than the surplus board, and supports 8GB memory (I seem to recall the older one only supporting 4GB). Might be worth the $20 more, depends on what you want to do. Of course for the DW server/emulator something like the Raspberry Pi is smaller, but not as easy to set up or versatile. It's all in choice!

As for Mini-ITX cases, Newegg has a good many with power supply for around $50 (+$6-7 shipping). Of course shipping to South America would be a bit more... I'm sure there are some Mini-ITX suppliers down that way though.

-- 
Frank Swygert
Editor - American Motors Cars Magazine
www.amc-mag.com