[NEWS] Mercutio proves...

[Handruin]

Mercutio proves that he can accidently visit the front page.

Intel announces new, smaller BTX form to succeed ATX. Features apparently include smaller motherboards, "instant on" (I remember seeing something about that while installing Windows 98, too), and integrated support for 802.11. Hope that doesn't get turned on by default.

News Source

 

[CougTek]

Intel announces new, smaller BTX form to succeed ATX. Features apparently include smaller motherboards, "instant on" (I remember seeing something about that while installing Windows 98, too), and integrated support for 802.11.

In the full version of the article, the "instant on" feature is a separated feature from the BTX form factor. Instant on is due to come in the next few years, while I haven't read anything suggesting a specific time frame for the introduction of the BTX form factor.

Finally, desktop planner Burns had more than PCI Express graphics and BTX motherboards to show: He previewed an "instant" on/off technology that could trim PC startup or recover-from-power-failure time to just a few seconds in the next few years, and plans to simplify home network assembly by building a wireless access point and router functionality right into the desktop by mid-2004.

 

[Mercutio]

My point was that the instant on thing has been "real soon now" since at least the release of the first edition of win98. Shoot. A lot of BIOSes ignore the CMOS setting for powerbutton functionality (soft-off or hard off) anyway.

 

[Jan Kivar]

Here's the .PDF from www.formfactors.org.

It seems that Intel realized that it's impossible to cool Prescott with air and maintain moderable sound levels if the processor is located as in ATX. So, Intel took the easy way, and designed a new form factor that enables the use of colder air from outside the case.

That's my opinion on the matter. [BTX does enable smaller cases, but I don't think that it was the sole purpose of the new design...]

Cheers,

Jan

 

[Fushigi]

My point was that the instant on thing has been "real soon now" since at least the release of the first edition of win98. Shoot.

My orignal PC, a Zenith Z-151, went from powered off to A:> prompt in exactly 4 seconds which included booting MS-DOS 2.11 from floppy. Close enough to instant for me. I've been waiting for 'modern' machines to catch up ever since.

 

[blakerwry]

i've heard of 6-8 second boots in XP.. I believe my boot time was around 8 seconds from complete off using my SB51G... my suspend to RAM time(as close to off as it gets) back to desktop is about 4 seconds on my shuttle boxes. Most of that is just the hard drive spin up...

 

[CougTek]

Anandtech has an article about the BTX form factor if you want more details about it.

For quick boot times, you might be interested by the trimmed down OSes offered by LitePC. They claim boot times between 3 and 10 seconds. And more secure OS since less services are enabled/installed.