Looking for mini-ITX board

[Chris]

Can someone point me to a place to buy a cheap used mini-ITX board with TV-Out?  I want to build a small CP for my brother for Christmas that would be used like a Jakk's TV Games, where you just plug it into the TV and power and play.  He only would play old games like Joust and Pac-Man, and I would build this on DOS, so I don't need the modern 1 GHz CPU's.  On eBay they cost around a hundred, but I don't have that kind of money to put in just the motherboard on this project...

Thank you for any pointers!

--Chris

[DrewKaree]

From what I understand, these things are ALL expensive.  I was looking for one as well, but ~100 seems to be the cheapest I was able to find, as well.  I'm afraid that you're in my situation as well - SOL

Depending on how big you make the CP, you may be able to fit in a regular mobo.  Check newegg for general sizes to see if your CP will house one.

Basically, my only pointer is to give up the thought of a mini-ITX   

[SOAPboy]

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-185-033&depa=1

Mirco ATX

next best solution.. now, youll have to tack on 20-30 bucks for a video card with RCA Video out, but still thats cheaper than 100..

in fact, that might just be the same board in my mame machine.. crappy motherboard, but does the job, and well.

[SteveJ34]

As others have indicated, I don't think you are going to find a true mini-itx form factor for much less than $100....even in used eBay searches for the older 500-600mhz models.

I looked at these for componets for a couple of different juke and bartop mame projects and ended up scrounging up some micro atx socket 370 boards with onboard video.

Here's a couple of listings for boards with onboard TV Out/SVideo ports that might be a resource for a low cost base system. I have no specific knowledge of either of these vendors nor the products they are offering but ran across them when looking for other steals and deals.....

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=4614&item=6725870102&rd=1

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=4614&item=6725730218&rd=1

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=16180&item=6725015912&rd=1

[DarkKobold]

ACT  NOW!!!!!
 
NewEgg Link
55-20 instant rebate!

35.50!!!!!

[DrewKaree]

That's an ATX board, and while it's a stellar deal, not what he's looking for.

[ften]

[maraxle]

   It's interesting that the price for these boards have stayed constant/increased slightly sense I bought mine like 2 years ago. I think I got my Epia 800 for like 80 bucks. Now it's like 100 to 125 from most retailers... supply and demand I guess. Directron has them for like 82 though; Not a bad price.

http://store.yahoo.com/directron/viaepiav8000a.html

-FTen

That's the version without tv-out, though.

[BeefyD]

The big disadvantage of using the micro-ATX would be the ATX power supply, correct? Or do they sell mini-power supplies for ATX.  I see all the sweet-arse projects on mini-itx.org and they all use very small power supplies....

[ften]

[Chris]

Yeah, the power supply is a big problem with ATX

I do have a tiny motherboard, but it's a 386SX-33 with 16 MB RAM... I don't think I can get MAME to run on that.... it's acting as my printer server (running Windows 95) right now... before home routers got cheap I ran Linux on it and used it as a router/firewall...

[SirPeale]

ACT  NOW!!!!!
 
NewEgg Link
55-20 instant rebate!

35.50!!!!!

Oooh...Soyo rebate.  Don't bother, they usually don't pay them out.

[SteveJ34]

If 95watt will do you, you can rip a new small form factor ATX PS outa one of these....

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=3669&item=6725649331&rd=1

I've picked up a few of these, and the painted ones are not always painted....not that it matters if you only want to pull out the PS.

[Chris]

I was really trying to end up with an external power brick so the whole thing could be fanless... I've heard you can make some of these boot off a USB flash drive, which would be really nifty; no moving parts at all!  (A 128MB flash drive would be fine for a DOS classics-only MAME setup....)

Thanks for all the pointers!

--Chris

[Samstag]

I have an Epia 600Mhz ITX board that can boot from just about anything.  I was going to use compact flash on an IDE adaptor (appears to be an IDE hard drive to the motherboard).  The idea was to be totally silent other than the speakers.

It works great for classics using .88.  It just doesn't quite have the power for some of the newer (90's) games I want to play.

[Chris]

well, I doubt there would be anything more recent than 1985 on this one... the CP is just going to be two joysticks with two buttons each, so no fighters here except maybe Karate Champ... I was actually thinking of putting four-ways on it, except for the fact that I'm thinking of adding Robotron and Scramble.

--Chris