For those that don't already know about these boards, they are mini-ITX MB
w/ an embedded low-power VIA C3 processor and VIA Castelrock graphics. 

Supposedly, numerous people use these boards under Linux with the vesa
driver under XFree86 4.3, and with a native via driver under XFree86
4.3.99.2+. No linux users have encountered the problem I'm seeing. Not that
any of this proves anything, but I suspect that somehow netbsd is a
factor in this problem, although brain damage on my parts is always a
possibility. I have 1.6M loaded. XFree86 4.3 was built from netbsd cvs
source and 4.3.99.4 from xfree86.orgs cvs source. Both compiled versions of
X work fine on two other systems.

I've tried two boards. When I try to start X all video just stops, i.e. no
video signal on the CRT output. The CRT is just dead, as is the RCA video
out plug. Turning off power management, forcing the video to various modes
in XF86Config, messing with the video output settings in the bios all
 have no effect. Cntrl-alt-backspace will kill X, but the CRT video does not
return to life when X is killed. I suspect that it's not a coincidence that
power consumption by the server drops by 10 watts when the video dies.

If anyone has one of these boards with Xfree86 running netbsd, please let me
know. If there were any tricks you had to do to get the video to work, I'd
love to hear about them. 

These boards are pretty sweet, all video issues aside. The 600Mhz Eden
processors only use 5w of power. The M6000 bords with theses cpus
only need a heatsink for the cpu, so they are completely fanless/noiseless. 
The M10000 uses a small 26 dBA fan, but runns at 1GHz.

It would be nice if I could get the video to work without having to add pci
video cards as a workaround.

more info on the boards can be found here:

http://www.viavpsd.com/product/epia_m_spec.jsp?motherboardId=81

-- 
Harry Waddell
Caravan Electronic Publishing
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