Lippert Mini-ITX Thunderbird

Edwood · Post by **Edwood** » Sat Dec 20, 2003 1:28 pm

I've been a very good boy for Christmas....

After what seemed like months and months of negotiating...oh wait, it was several months.

The folks at EMJ America finally delivered.

Initial setup pics to follow. I'll be out of town for two weeks, so in depth follow ups will be about a month from now. Happy Holidays to all!

And yes, I'm still working to get a Radisys LS855 too. They are being alot more uncooperative.
-Ed

Edwood · Post by **Edwood** » Sat Dec 20, 2003 5:19 pm

That's one clean board. What amazes me is there are no large electrolytic caps on this board. Fine German engineering here.

I have a 1.3 GHz Pentium M cpu with the Thunderbird.

For more info on this board check out Lippert's Site
-Ed

beud · Post by **beud** » Sat Dec 20, 2003 5:21 pm

That's a cool board!

I'm trying to get a evaluation sample of the Radisys /w P-M 1.6 through my company. After one week of nego, I have got a decent quotation but a minimun order of 3 unit. I can't quite understand why they wouldn't provide an evalution board to a potential futur client... I'm still pushing to get my board though

Edwood wrote: And yes, I'm still working to get a Radisys LS855 too. They are being alot more uncooperative.
-Ed

Edwood · Post by **Edwood** » Sat Dec 20, 2003 5:24 pm

Would your company be willing to sell one to me?

-Ed

beud · Post by **beud** » Sat Dec 20, 2003 5:31 pm

Sure, that would solve the min quantity issue provided that we find a 3rd partener!
I am not sure how to secure transactions of that sort. You can contact me a beudycool(at)yahoo.com for further discussion.

Post by **NeilBlanchard** » Sat Dec 20, 2003 7:55 pm

...what is it? A Pentium M motherboard? With onboard video -- what sort?

Edwood · Post by **Edwood** » Sat Dec 20, 2003 10:32 pm

Testing it out.

Wow, this is one cool CPU. I put a temp probe between the fins of that little heatsink. At idle it's 26 celcius! Can't wait to torture test this lil guy and see how cool it actually stays.

-Ed

pandamonium54 · Post by **pandamonium54** » Sat Dec 20, 2003 11:05 pm

Is that a WiFi card I see? If so, what draft revision is it, and how is it connected to the Lippert?

Edwood · Post by **Edwood** » Sat Dec 20, 2003 11:22 pm

LOL, no it's a Just Cooler remote control. Using it to turn on, off, and reset.

A WiFi card can go in this board. Notice the SO-DIMM style mini-PCI slot. It's only 3.3volt ver 1.0, so probably no mini-PCI video cards will work.

-Ed

Jan Kivar · Post by **Jan Kivar** » Sun Dec 21, 2003 8:35 am

Lippert wrote:The board can be cooled passively at clock speeds of up to 1300 MHz.

So, why is the fan still plugged in?

The Radisys' board seems more "competitive" than Lippert's. I hope that You'd get one for reviewing; this is the future of silent computing.

Cheers,

Jan

Edwood · Post by **Edwood** » Sun Dec 21, 2003 9:24 am

Lippert has a different cooler for passive cooling. I think that tiny little heatsink may not be enough for the 1.3GHz at 100% load.
I have asked for the "passive" cooler, but they haven't included one. They claim there is one for the 900MHz Pentium M, even though they advertise one for the 1.3 I'm still bugging them to send me one of those, and I'll probably mod something if they don't.

Well, that little fan is pretty quiet for a little fan, It's not a high pitched screamer. But it's a 5 volt fan, so replacements and mods will be more difficult. I will test it later to see if it'll work well without the fan on. What's annoying is that the BIOS does not have any motherboard monitoring in it. Unlike most boards, you cannot see the "health" status from the BIOS. No temp, voltage, or even CPU speed rating. Only Fan RPM, and it's buried in there. This is a Phoenix BIOS with a fancy start up screen, but it's one of the least featured BIOS I've ever seen. The lack of any PC "Health" monitoring in the BIOS is a serious deficiency in a board that is designed and priced for the embedded market.

I'm still hoping to get a Radisys LS855. Is anyone else getting a Pentium M motherboard too? Or are you cheap bastards just waiting to see what I do?

-Ed

GamingGod · Post by **GamingGod** » Sun Dec 21, 2003 9:30 am

For some reason the heatsink on that cpu pisses me off. I would feel the need to put a huge chunk of copper on it instead.

Gandalf · Post by **Gandalf** » Sun Dec 21, 2003 11:12 am

It's a bloody cool board. Sadly it's too damned expensive.

.

GeekMoses · Post by **GeekMoses** » Sun Dec 21, 2003 11:23 am

I'd probably be interested in taking the third board if I can afford it. How much would this run?

-GM

wsc · Post by **wsc** » Sun Dec 21, 2003 8:16 pm

What kind of enclosure are you going to put it in? Better be as cool as the board

Trip · Post by **Trip** » Sun Dec 21, 2003 8:40 pm

think prices will drop after christmas?

Edwood · Post by **Edwood** » Sun Dec 21, 2003 9:33 pm

Doubtful that prices will drop significantly after Xmas, as industrial computer sales are not subject to the same effects on holiday sales as retail products are.

However, prices will probably drop when the usual dip in the tech market sets in late February.

I am quite irked at Lippert's misrepresentation of their advertising "passive cooling for up to 1300MHz possible" and not backing it up with a real option you can order. EMJ is trying to help me procure a passive Heatsink cooler. But as it stands, there isn't a standalone option for passive cooling. Nor is there an option to order a single sample of the board sans CPU. They come shipped from Lippert with the CPU installed. Mind you, these are NOT soldered CPU's. They are completely removeable standard retail Intel Pentium M CPU's.

BTW, for United States residents, and possibly other countries, EMJ seems to be the best choice, however I really had to push hard for them to sell me just one. They may be more receptive of a "group buy" in possibly lots of 5. If anyone is seriously interested, I could foward the information. But I frankly do not have the time or resources to organize a group buy right now, as it is the holidays, of course. I'm out of town, so I won't be touching the Lippert board for at least two weeks.

So til then, happy and safe holidays to all.

-Ed

Trip · Post by **Trip** » Sun Dec 21, 2003 9:49 pm

thanks for the info., maybe you should return the board for a 900Mhz? or a 1.1Ghz

can't beat fanless!

i know this has been asked, but do you know of a place selling mini-AGP cards? I may get a board from bwi.com if i could find one.

or is emj cheaper?

sounds like emj is more difficult than bwi, but that's what you'd expect from a non-retailer right?

Edwood · Post by **Edwood** » Sun Dec 21, 2003 10:17 pm

Mini AGP cards will most definitely not work with this board, as it is a ver1.0 spec MiniPCI slot. It is intended for wireless cards.

BTW, I believe Dell still sells mini-AGP graphics cards. Look for them under upgrades for Dell Inspiron notebooks.

EMJ may be more difficult, but they are faster in this case.

-Ed

Edwood · Post by **Edwood** » Sun Dec 21, 2003 10:23 pm

WOAH!

I just noticed that BWI now sells the Commel Mini ITX Pentium M board with a Mini-AGP slot option. There you go!

http://www.bwi.com/scripts/site/site_ca ... /configure

Cheaper than Lippert for sure. BTW, the Lippert Thunderbird I have is going to replace the FV-25 mobo in my Server. So, gaming is not an issue in this guy.

That's why I'm interested in the Radisys LS855 for......

-Ed

Trip · Post by **Trip** » Sun Dec 21, 2003 10:34 pm

dude, i posted the link in the huge Pentium M page, heh you posted right after my post.

I may go back and delete some of that stuff, it got really OT. I doubt many people have read the entire thing...

bwi.com told me in an email that the mini-AGP version wouldn't be out yet, and then put the product up on their page... so it may or may not be available.

Edwood · Post by **Edwood** » Sun Dec 21, 2003 11:40 pm

Yes, always call before ordering anything from BWI. Even though they have a friendly online ordering system, it doesn't mean that they actually have anything in stock.

They are quite courteous and will keep you updated, however. I cancelled my order for the Commel board, because the Lippert showed up first.

-Ed

Trip · Post by **Trip** » Mon Dec 22, 2003 12:45 am

some mini-pci cards I found while looking for mini-AGP: http://www.bosertek.com/products/minipci.htm

Pakkapakka · Post by **Pakkapakka** » Mon Jan 12, 2004 11:29 am

Edwood wrote: I am quite irked at Lippert's misrepresentation of their advertising "passive cooling for up to 1300MHz possible" and not backing it up with a real option you can order. EMJ is trying to help me procure a passive Heatsink cooler. But as it stands, there isn't a standalone option for passive cooling. Nor is there an option to order a single sample of the board sans CPU. They come shipped from Lippert with the CPU installed. Mind you, these are NOT soldered CPU's. They are completely removeable standard retail Intel Pentium M CPU's.

-Ed

Perhaps the 1.3 GHz passive claim is in the context of the Banias LV model. I believe the current 1.3 GHz LV runs at 10w. Not exactly comparable to an Banias ULV or Via ESP, but possible to cool using a decent passive heatsink.

On a related thread, has anyone found any retail Banias ULV processors? I've only found LV series so far, and these are quite hard to track down.

just21 · Post by **just21** » Fri Jan 16, 2004 12:18 pm

http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS7620458175.html

Confusing article, I was told the 1.3 pentium m thuderbird is actively cooled but the above article contradicts this.Picture of passively cooled 1.1 ulv pentium m thunderbird though link says 1300? confused!
http://www.linuxdevices.com/files/misc/lippert_1300.jpg

silvervarg · Post by **silvervarg** » Fri Jan 16, 2004 2:43 pm

From that artice:
"Currently we sell an Thunderbird board with 1.6 GHz Pentium M and 512 MByte DRAM and low noise active cooler to end users for 875 Euro," notes Lippert founder Peter Lippert. "The passive version with 1.1 GHz Pentium M and 512 MByte DRAM costs 895 Euro."

Yikes!
That is one very costly board...
Defenatly not worth the price IMHO.

Edwood · Post by **Edwood** » Thu Jan 29, 2004 9:24 am

Yeah, I'm pretty pissed that Lippert didn't offer a passively cooled version when they clearly stated that one was available.

Pakkapakka, are you sure that there are different versions of the 1.3GHz Banias? Did Lippert put a non LV Banias in the actively cooled 1.3GHz one I have?

I am currently negotiating for EMJ to swap the actively cooled one I have for the newer passively cooled one. Or for the Heatsink to be swapped. But if they are indeed using a different Low Voltage CPU, then the heatsink swap won't work.

BTW, I yanked the power to the Fan and it took about 15 minutes to overheat.

-Ed

Edwood · Post by **Edwood** » Thu Jan 29, 2004 9:27 am

Anybody else have the Lippert board yet?

I can't get Motherboard Monitor to work with the Thunderbird. I'm using Windows 2000. Under sensors it lists none whatsoever. No voltage monitoring either.

Also, no PC health monitoring in the BIOS. No voltage monitoring. Nothing. WTF was Lippert thinking?! Making an "embedded" industial motherboard without any vital monitoring capabilities?! This is unacceptible.

I emailed Lippert about this problem.

-Ed

Edwood · Post by **Edwood** » Thu Jan 29, 2004 10:02 am

Oh yeah, did I mention that Lippert is raising their US prices starting Feb 2 ?

Pakkapakka · Post by **Pakkapakka** » Fri Jan 30, 2004 8:09 am

Edwood wrote:
Pakkapakka, are you sure that there are different versions of the 1.3GHz Banias? Did Lippert put a non LV Banias in the actively cooled 1.3GHz one I have?

I stand corrected. The fastest shipping LV Pentium M (Banias .13) is 1.2 GHz.

This is confirmed on the Intel Pentium M overview page at Intel:
Pentium M Processor Features

My apologies for the confusion.

Lippert Mini-ITX Thunderbird

Lippert Mini-ITX Thunderbird

Re: Lippert Thunderbird

I'll bite...