NES Retro Media Center

Today I got my VIA Epia P820 from Mini-ITX.de. Right now I have all the parts that I need som hopefully there will be alot of posts from now on. Lets start with the unboxing of the P820 moderboard!

Very soon I will be starting to actually do something on this project :) The 16th of February RetroZone shipped my order. Yesterday DealExtreme sent my order and on 1th of Mars Mini-ITX.de will send my Via Epia Pico P820 moderboard. Now it is only the RAM memory that is left to order. Im so excited!

Today I was put in a very hard situation, I was forced to choose if I was going to build my NES to USB converter or to buy it. I so wanted to build it my self by using a PIC microcontroller but since I did not have a programmer and was only to program two chips it was alot cheaper to buy the converters. From what I could see from forums RetroZone was the best place to go and so I did. As soon as they arrives I will put out some pictures cause I will install the converters in a special way.

Since I did a bit of reasearch on how to build and program the NES to USB converter it is ashame to let it go to waist. Ther for I will post some good links here.

• The PIC18F4550 from Microchip is a really nice microcontroller to use for this USB project.
• Microchip also have very good programmers and debugger tools, PICkit 2.
• If you like DIY, like me please have a look at this article at www.diyife.com.
• And here are some information about programming it on a Mac!
• The software and alot of more information on how to do this you can find here.
• Also if you like YouTube, MungedToastFaces has posted alot of good videos.

I know I have said it before but now I will now wait any longer. The brand new VIA EPIA-P820 with the new 64-Bit Nano processor, have a look at there homepage! Since the board is so new it is hard to find resellers that ship to Sweden but the VIA’s Facebook group have helped me a lot.

So far I think these shops will ship to Sweden:

• http://via-itx.com/via-amos-3000-series.html
• www.mini-tft.de

A new form factor has been released today, the board measures 6×6 cm. Read more in there press release.

Finally! This is what I have been looking for: “The fanless VIA EPIA-P720 Pico-ITX provides superb hardware acceleration for HD media over native HDMI at resolutions of up to 1080p”. Now I just need to find a reseller or should I wait to the new VIA Nano 3000 64-bit CPU? :)

Sorry for not beeing so active here. I have been working on my OpenBSD router/firewall built on an Alix 2d3 board with flashdist. For the media center The future is looking very good! Just look at Fit PC2 and P710-HD!

The VIA Surfboard C855 meets this demand by providing flawless playback of high bit-rate 1080p HD video, which along with support for internal display resolutions of up to 1366 x 768 pixels and external display resolutions up to 1920 x 1440 pixels, the latest high definition VIA Vinyl Audio, and a wide range of connectivity options, allows for a rich on-the-go multimedia experience.

The future is looking bright! VIA is now presenting a new platform called Trinity and Nvidia have taken up the competition. Enjoy!

It is not every day VIA releases new products. The 27 of June 2008 VIA released a new Pico-ITX board called EPIA-P700. Only thing that is missing for my project is that it do not support HDTV. It is also possible to read that new Mini-ITX v2.0 boards will be released in the fourth quarter of 2008.

• VIA EPIA-P700
• VIA Press Room 2008