Intel D201GLY: cheap, low power mini-ITX

Master One · Post by **Master One** » Sun Oct 07, 2007 10:33 pm

jessekopelman wrote:
Master One wrote: In the meantime I was investigating the possible use of a cheap consumer router with DD-WRT, but as it looks like, such a unit is not capable of managing fast ADSL2+ lines (with PPPoE management, QoS / Traffic Shaping,...)
Are you sure about that? 20Mbps is not very fast, in Ethernet terms. What makes you think that a good consumer router (Asus WL-500G) couldn't handle such an uplink?

It's the lack of CPU power and memory. All the (reasonable cheap) consumer router for DD-WRT (or similiar OSS) only have around 200-264 MHz with 16 or 32 MB RAM and 4-8 MB FLASH. That's just not enough to have some important services running. There is a thread in the German DD-WRT forum, in which it is told, that a 25 Mbit WAN link could only be handled, if everything else (especially QoS / Traffic Shaping, which seems to be very CPU consuming) has been turned off. So that's not an option, if you have to do without QoS / Traffic Shaping to get full throughput (my firewall-router has to handle the PPPoE tunnel as well, which also eats from CPU power).

jessekopelman · Post by **jessekopelman** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 1:09 am

Master One wrote: It's the lack of CPU power and memory. All the (reasonable cheap) consumer router for DD-WRT (or similiar OSS) only have around 200-264 MHz with 16 or 32 MB RAM and 4-8 MB FLASH. That's just not enough to have some important services running. There is a thread in the German DD-WRT forum, in which it is told, that a 25 Mbit WAN link could only be handled, if everything else (especially QoS / Traffic Shaping, which seems to be very CPU consuming) has been turned off. So that's not an option, if you have to do without QoS / Traffic Shaping to get full throughput (my firewall-router has to handle the PPPoE tunnel as well, which also eats from CPU power).

Yes, I know that consumer routers only have CPUs that run < 300MHz and small amounts of RAM. However, the CPUs in these boxes are not x86 general purpose CPUs, they are RISC chips designed from the ground up for pushing packets. For this specific application the CPU inside these routers is probably worth an x86 chip clocked at 4X the speed. As for the RAM, 32MB doesn't sound like much, but how big a buffer do you need to move 20 megabits/second? I'd think something less than a megabyte. That said, the whole traffic shaping thing is only going to be as resource efficient as the code is optimized to use the specific hardware. Perhaps, that part of DD-WRT just isn't optimized enough. Still, this is the first I've heard of it. Indeed, in reviews I've read, even the QOS functions that come with the default firmware on these boxes seem to perform well enough (albeit with often poor configurability and limited function.

Master One · Post by **Master One** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 11:28 am

Even with RISC chips I doubt they can handle the given demand, as stated in the mentioned DD-WRT thread. I specifically know for example, that typical ADSL2+ modem-routers (like the Zyxel P660 or Vood 422 used by local ISPs) are quickly overloaded and get unstable (or even reboot), when they have to handle the PPPoE tunnel and some heavy filesharing is involved (the Vood 422 is even known to only allow 256 simultaneous connections). That's why I use my ADSL2+ modem in bridged mode, and let the pfSense machine handle the PPPoE management.

I posted my own thread in the English DD-WRT forum asking for advice concerning this issue, but nobody replied. So unless someone confirms the proper operation for that purpose, I'll rather stick with the idea of building a dedicated system based on the D201GLY2 for running pfSense, instead of using such a cheap commercial router with DD-WRT.

dougz · Post by **dougz** » Sat Oct 13, 2007 5:44 am

Last I checked, the Intel download pages had pulled the Linux drivers that they had previously offered.

Thomas Winischhofer, XFree86/X.org driver developer, has apparently ceased all development, due to lack of compensation for the time he has put in.

Pointer found in article http://www.sudhian.com/index.php?/forum ... 69/#867494
to Winischhofer's site at http://www.winischhofer.eu/linuxsisvga.shtml

Winischhofer --

SiS is unfortunately one of those companies that do not support Linux or X.org/XFree86. They don't (and will not) release any documentation on their products (with a few exceptions) and write drivers only for Microsoft's DOS-extensions (called "Windows" by many people; and yes, "Windows" is a trademark). Although they have released XFree86 drivers previously and have released a (binary) driver for the SiS650 in the past, these are and were heavily buggy and not developed any further from a certain point. In other words: Their XFree86 drivers are useless. If you have a notebook, you don't even need to consider trying them.

I have developed this driver since 2000 and spent a lot of my spare time for doing so and prividing support by e-mail and the forum. We are taking about approx 4000-5000 hours here; I stopped counting a long time ago. Since none of the involved hardware manufacturers ever supported me in this process and I - opposed to nearly all other X.org developers - am not paid by anyone for my efforts, I for now decided to stop wasting my precious and rare spare time by supporting these companies by selflessly providing them with the means to sell more of their hardware.

Therefore, starting Dec 8, 2005, there are two versions of the X driver available:

1. The Free Version. This version is free for download and use and its codebase will from time to time be committed to the X.org CVS so that it shows up in releases of X.org.
2. The Premium Version. This version is only available in binary form and for a fee. It has advanced features not available in the Free Version.

(2007/10/06) Despite of what is written below: Development is ceased. The source of the Premium version is available for download here. THERE IS NO SUPPORT WHATSOEVER FOR THIS CODE. A BINARY IS NOT AVAILABLE.

Whatever the merits of these Intel boards for Windows users, the lack of driver support makes them very problemmatical for Linux/FOSS users. Very unfortunate.

sea2stars · Post by **sea2stars** » Sat Oct 13, 2007 7:34 pm

I'm running PClinuxOS on the D201GLY and I have everything working except 3D acceleration. There's horrible screen tearing using the default Sis drivers and VESA just sucks. I managed to get 2D acceleration working by using files from the Mandriva rpm that Intel had up. I've also found that there are some binaries, a 3D driver and an install script for various distros included in another rpm that Intel had posted for the D201GLY; just not sure where to go with it.

Master One · Post by **Master One** » Sun Oct 14, 2007 12:36 am

Does anybody have a download link for that missing driver package from the Intel site?

jmk · Post by **jmk** » Sun Oct 14, 2007 2:04 am

VESA driver (X.org) is working fine at least at 1280 x 1024 with Mandriva (2008.0) and Fedora Core 7. No screen distortions - and no 3D acceleration, though.

There are some links to old Intel drivers here: http://www.2x.com/forums/index.php (in "2X ThinClientServer"). Google "sis 662 Ubuntu" for more.

dougz · Post by **dougz** » Sun Oct 14, 2007 2:58 am

Followed jmk's link to 2x.com thread and saw nzsteve's post of 9 Oct that they drivers had been uploaded to megaupload. However, it sounds like they didn't work for him.

Same site has forumworx2x's 9 Oct post on how to extract file from Intel's Suse driver to use on Ubuntu Gutsy Gibon (7.10). Bad link to Intel driver download, but extraction technique given.

I was curious how the VESA driver can work fine with Mandriva at 1280x1024 with no screen distortions. The answer may help those with other distros. I googled for the Ubuntu forum cited by forumworx2x and found the answer at

Re: Video Driver for Intel D201GLY (SiS662 - Mirage*1)
Ok, so it appears to work if you run
Quote:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
and instead of using the sis driver, select the vesa driver (its one of the first thing you configure) and just follow the rest of the steps. At the end, restart, and it works.
Thanks to HowardDrake for the idea, works like a charm.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?s= ... stcount=10

So, if we are willing to give up hardware accelerations (SiS driver), we can have stable higher resolutions (VESA driver). Seems acceptable, to me, for a board like this. Anyone else willing to test this? (I don't have the board.)

Further on in the same Ubuntu forum is advice on compiling Winischhofer's latest sis premium driver. Poster skiselev says

So, not everything is working, but still it's better than current Xorg's SiS driver (no noise, XV works). http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p= ... stcount=25

See his post for complete details about what works and what doesn't, as well as step-by-step compilation instructions.

sea2stars · Post by **sea2stars** » Sun Oct 14, 2007 12:01 pm

Most of the Sis 662 video driver rpms from Intel site; Mandriva, Suse, Redhat.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=REC1SCR6

I manged to get the 2d acceleration working in PCLinuxOS by using rpm2cpio <rpm> | cpio -id to unpack the Mandriva files and then copy them to their respective location on the hard drive; backing up the originals as I went by adding .old to the file name. This is my first Linux install, so I'm not sure if this is the best route but it worked for me.

VESA simply isn't acceptable. Yeah, it works but it's agonizing to deal with. I'll have to be happy with 2D acceleration, though 3D/DRI support would be nice. If you unpack the sis_drv-1.0-8.src.rpm file there appears to be an install script for various distributions, but I have no idea if it's of any use. Worse case I'll put in a Geforce2 card in and disable the onboard video; not sure what the power use will change to though.

dougz · Post by **dougz** » Sun Oct 14, 2007 1:43 pm

sea2stars --

VESA simply isn't acceptable. Yeah, it works but it's agonizing to deal with. I'll have to be happy with 2D acceleration, though 3D/DRI support would be nice.

Do you see any of the 2D acceleration crashes noted by skiselev in

...
Status of driver's features:
- 2D acceleration (XAA) - works
- 2D acceleration (EXA) - crashes then starting gnome terminal, and probably some other programs
- 3D acceleration (DRI) - not supported.
- XVideo - overlay method - not usable, glitches
- XVideo - blitter method - works. Add 'Option "XvDefaultAdaptor" "Blitter"' to 'Device' section of your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, to use blitter method by default

So, not everything is working, but still it's better than current Xorg's SiS driver (no noise, XV works).
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p= ... stcount=25

It may be the case that the last published X.org drivers are more stable than Winischhofer's latest sis premium driver, which was what was tested for skiselev's post. (Especially considering that the target was 661, not 662.)

Acceptability of VESA depends on intended use and whether that slot is needed for other purposes. I need the slot.

sea2stars · Post by **sea2stars** » Sun Oct 14, 2007 6:37 pm

I'm currently using KDE in PCLinuxOS. EXA works but tended to be a bit buggy, no crashes though, so I disabled it shortly after enabling it; it's not a default setting and from what I've gathered it's a bit buggy with many chipsets. Some of the windows weren't compositing/rendering correctly. I also saw something mentioned on Winischhofer's site that the x.org peeps managed to screw up EXA in the Sis drivers; though that was back in '06.

I know what you mean. I really don't want to waste the only PCI slot for something the board should be capable of by default.

dougz · Post by **dougz** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 3:11 am

EXA works but tended to be a bit buggy, no crashes though, so I disabled it shortly after enabling it; it's not a default setting and from what I've gathered it's a bit buggy with many chipsets.

Good to know. That works for me. Might be interesting to compile the latest Winischhofer driver when I get a board. At any rate, between this and other forums, a lot of progress has been made on making this board usable under Linux.

Interesting --

Intel Little Valley (D201GLY) is available now, costs 70USD, and will run rings around the VIA while occupying the same miniITX footprint. Or wait for LV2 (D201GLY2), later this year, same price. Has an additional two SATA ports, and trades about 10% performance for about 50% less power consumption- it'll run 100% passive!

http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.php?s ... ostcount=9

(Emphasis added.) The addition of SATA is great. I'd happily trade the 10% performance for the ability to run passive, but it is hard to imagine a large passive heatsink in a dinky mini-ITX case. I hope that there will be a few off-the-shelf cases that will accomodate the board.

At any rate, my procrastination has appeared to pay off (for a change).

Master One · Post by **Master One** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 3:57 am

dougz wrote:D201GLY2... I'd happily trade the 10% performance for the ability to run passive, but it is hard to imagine a large passive heatsink in a dinky mini-ITX case. I hope that there will be a few off-the-shelf cases that will accomodate the board.

Comparing two tiny pictures of the D201GLY & D201GLY2 in the actual Intel Product Matrix, I'd say the heatsink of the D201GLY2 is just a little higher than the heatsink+fan combo on the D201GLY2, but not really larger.

sea2stars · Post by **sea2stars** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 7:18 am

Hrm.. I'll have to think about getting the D201GLY2. I'm not too interested in using SATA since I have a 1.8" drive in my current case; along with a slim slot load DVD burner, wifi USB adapter and 80mm fan. But passive would be nice since I could use a smaller "case". Then again, I did manage to totally screw up my install; thank Jebus I can run my system off the remastered LiveCD I made with all the correct drivers installed.

jmk · Post by **jmk** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 7:21 am

I spent quite a lot of time configuring my D201GLY based web server to work with sis662 driver. No luck whatsoever.

Xorg's VESA: For some reason VESA solution works only with Fedora and Mandriva. (I tried my luck with OpenSuse and Ubuntu, but ended up with problems.) Both were easy to install. After the first boot I just opened Mandriva's (2008.0: Live Install) own Control Center and changed graphic card to Xorg's VESA. Reboot and no screen distortions. Fedora 7 installation was as easy.

2D is enough for my use (web server + occassional web surfing when I don't want to open another computer). Flash and Java with Konqueror (I use KDE, never liked Gnome) and - yes, at least I am pleased with VESA driver.

dougz · Post by **dougz** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 7:42 am

Master One --

Comparing two tiny pictures of the D201GLY & D201GLY2 in the actual Intel Product Matrix, I'd say the heatsink of the D201GLY2 is just a little higher than the heatsink+fan combo on the D201GLY2, but not really larger.

Would you please post the URL? I can't seem to find that picture. (Not doubting you, just curious.)

sea2stars --

Very clever case idea. Easy access. Attractive.

Which wifi USB? The reviews that I've read claim that most have heat/stability problems, short range, and often have Linux driver issues.

jmk --

Xorg's VESA: For some reason VESA solution works only with Fedora and Mandriva. (I tried my luck with OpenSuse and Ubuntu, but ended up with problems.)

If you were really interested in Ubuntu/Debian, you might want to follow-up on the Ubuntu forum thread I cited earlier. It claimed success. Lots of helpful folk in the Ubuntu forums.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?s= ... stcount=10

jmk · Post by **jmk** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 8:08 am

dougz

Ubuntu was my first call. For some reason "sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg" did not work for me.

Mandriva is ok, though I am really pissed because Finland is not listed as a choice in county list for localization (in Mandriva 2008.0). After all, is Finland not the place were Linux was born in the first place?

sea2stars · Post by **sea2stars** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 9:01 am

dougz - I was browsing through mini-itx.com and saw a few of the humidor projects there and thought the same thing; although they used smaller fans. I might give another go at modding another humidor; this was my first wood project and I learned a few things. Eh. One of these days I'll get around to posting some pics.

Um.. this is the adapter I'm using; I think Walmart has it for about $22. I have it hidden in the top portion of the case, using a USB cable plugged directly into the MB header, and haven't had any problems with it yet. It does get a bit warm but nothing too bad. I had some issues at first getting it to work, but once I updated ndiswrapper and used the XP drivers it worked perfectly through the GUI; even with WPA2 TKIP-AES.

Master One · Post by **Master One** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 11:49 am

dougz wrote:Master One --
Comparing two tiny pictures of the D201GLY & D201GLY2 in the actual Intel Product Matrix, I'd say the heatsink of the D201GLY2 is just a little higher than the heatsink+fan combo on the D201GLY2, but not really larger.
Would you please post the URL? I can't seem to find that picture. (Not doubting you, just curious.)

Sorry, can't do, it's in the Intel Reseller Center, which is a restricted zone for Intel Channel Members. But if you search for "D201GLY2" on google, there is one webpage in Japanese (I think) showing a picture from that exhibition in San Francisco, where the D201GLY2 is in a glas-case, with good view on the heatsink.

sea2stars · Post by **sea2stars** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 12:21 pm

D201GLY2 Pic

frank2003 · Post by **frank2003** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 2:07 pm

sea2stars wrote:D201GLY2 Pic

That's one small heat sink! By comparison, the passive heat sink on the VIA EN12000E that I have (http://www.silentpcreview.com/article609-page1.html) is at least 4 times the size.

So what's the catch? Does it need indirect cooling from a case fan nearby?

dougz · Post by **dougz** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 2:56 pm

Re: D201GLY2 Pic --

Domo arigato! Good pic. I'd much rather have a slow 60mm or 80mm quiet case fan aiding a "passive" board's heat sink than a 40mm "whiner" mounted on the heat sink. One issue with the Via boards with HSF has been fan noise as the little high-speed fan ages. YMMV, but I really like GLY2 better than Via boards, except for the SiS chipset.

jmk -- Finland, Linux, and Ubuntu

I remember downloading the Linux floppy images over the internal company network many years ago. Very few folks thought that the kid in Finland would ever have anything significant. Right...

Think where we would be without Linux, rms (Stallman), and the worldwide group of volunteers & hobbyists.

Sorry Ubuntu didn't work for you. "sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg" does give me the option "vesa" on my antique Ubuntu Dapper. (Didn't actually select it.) Have you considered asking on the Ubuntu forum?

sea2stars -- wifi USB

Thanks for the info. Turns out that you have a Ralink RT-73 chipset and there are native drivers, should you wish to dump ndiswrapper. Tutorial for building and configuring the driver (more info in the thread) -- http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p= ... stcount=20

Downunder · Post by **Downunder** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 7:24 pm

I like the look of this D201GLY2 board for a music server, ...........my first post !

Downunder · Post by **Downunder** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 7:27 pm

Now what I really want to say as it's my 2nd post....getting so close I can taste it !

http://www.mini-tft.de/xtc-neu/product_ ... 35a5e4efc8

Master One · Post by **Master One** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 11:02 pm

Downunder wrote:Now what I really want to say as it's my 2nd post....getting so close I can taste it ! http://www.mini-tft.de...

This new board is still not being shipped by Intel, so no dealer has it already available yet. I just checked again, the new estimate for a first delivery is now set to 5th November.

jmk · Post by **jmk** » Tue Oct 16, 2007 9:00 am

dougz

I will wait for Ubuntu 7.10 (only two more days!). The problem I encountered with Ubuntu was some minor screen distortion with VESA driver. Actually "sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg" sort of worked (the driver was installed), but...

Some more Linux nostalgy. I attended the University of Helsinki same time as Linus Torvalds and used same computers. As I was learning basics of Emacs and Unix, I had no clue what else was happening there...

I would really love to see working Ubuntu D201GLY installation. Hope Gutsy Gibbon will deliver.

sea2stars · Post by **sea2stars** » Tue Oct 16, 2007 3:00 pm

dougz - Thanks for the link! I'll have to give it a shot. I was going bonkers trying to get the native drivers to function properly with WPA2. Now that I have a LiveCD I can boot to if needed, I don't feel as worried about playing with Linux in my system.

dougz · Post by **dougz** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 3:31 am

sea2stars --

Now that I have a LiveCD I can boot to if needed, I don't feel as worried about playing with Linux in my system.

Live CDs are great for experimentation, but they can be kind of slow for large distros. I use USB pen drives as replacements for Live CDs when I play with small distros. If your box can boot from USB, there is a big speed improvement.

Haven't tried this with Ubuntu as my pen drives are only 512 MB, but this caught my eye and got bookmarked. Might be worthwhile if you have a larger pen drive, USB hard disk, or suitable media player --

How-to: Installing Ubuntu Linux on a usb pendrive
http://www.debuntu.org/how-to-install-u ... on-usb-bar

How-to: Installing Ubuntu Linux on a usb pendrive -- page 2
http://www.debuntu.org/how-to-install-u ... usb-bar-p2

sea2stars · Post by **sea2stars** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 6:54 am

Heh. I mainly use my remastered Live CD as a backup to reinstall PCLinuxOS after I've hosed the HD install; versus having to install/update everything again and getting the 2D acceleration to work. The last time was when after installing Suse on my USB stick it managed to screw up the partition record on my HD; it decided to use the swap on the HD.

PCLinuxOS has an option during the install to either use a USB or normal HD; I originally had it installed on a 4Gb 200x USB stick. Vroom. After trying numerous distros I've grown fairly fond of PCLinuxOS.

nirvanaguy19 · Post by **nirvanaguy19** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 12:03 pm

I want to run this board with a low profile fx5200 pci card, what kinda psu and case do i need that has enough power to run the system and can accept low profile pci cards

Intel D201GLY: cheap, low power mini-ITX

Linux driver development ceased

Drivers at megaupload?

..it's got to be close !!!

Re: ..it's got to be close !!!

using an pci video card with this