I didn't know if people had seen this board, so I thought I would mention it. It looks like a great starting point for a new indash pc.

Highlights (to me at least ):
12cm X 12cm
44 pin IDE header (Yay Notebook drives!)
10/100 LAN
No ports on the back! Instead there are headers to attach everything, PS/2, Video, LAN, USB. Easy to modify to go to docking connector?

While I know I will not be able to create anything nearly as good as the empeg software, I think this board may be a great place to start in creating a small in-dash removable PC. I love that the empeg is removable, and would want any in-dash PC to do the same. I'm thinking of getting one to see what I can put together. The biggest hurdle is the heatsink is huge! Makes fitting it all in an DIN enclosure more difficult!

Edit: Whoops! Forgot product link!

Are they actually available though? They announced the EPIA-N board (Nano-ITX like this one) something like 2 years ago and only now is it becoming available. I'm pretty keen to do up a new car PC while car is not being driven (no license )

I love my empeg, but I want to add navigation (amongst other things).

It looks like there are some available already.

http://mini-itx.com/store/?c=26#epianl

That's the site I saw them for sale at. Like you said, some are available. I was telling a cow-orker about it, and we were bouncing ideas off each other. You can have the TV out/composite drive a LCD touchscreen, and use the 15 pin VGA to control a front panel LCD much like the empegs display (full color though of course ). Really for a custom in-dash computer I think this board shows so much potential as an off the shelf part.

www.linitx.com claim to have 3 Nano models in stock, i'm giving some serious thought to getting one for a project at work.

Note that they say

"1Ghz fan-cooled VIA Luke CoreFusion™ Processor"

eventhough none of the pictures ever show a fan or a heatsink. I think this is quite misleading personally. They did the same with the inital pictures of the Epia-N board and it has a huge heatsink (relatively).

Edit: It appears the "NL8000E" model is fanless though.

Mini-itx.com did a review of the EPIA N10000 (note the difference between the N and the NL is the rear connectors). According to them the noise was about 20dBA, so I don't think it's anything to worry about.

I do agree though, that heatsink is huge. I think to get the motherboard, a slimline DVD, and a 2.5" HDD all in a single DIN enclosure you would have to modify the heatsink... a little grinding should do!

BTW, these guys make a pretty cool power supply for the nano-ITX motherboards. But unfortunately they need to make a new design to fit the boards.

Yeah it seems above 800MHz is where a fan is required.

These picoPSUs are pretty cool for a regular ATX connector. 120W isn't bad considering their size. Something like 96% efficient. They still require an external 12V supply of course though which necessitates a further external brick and the bigger bricks (12V 8.5A = 102W) seem to have fans in them. 100W is quite a bit for a small firewall/router/server type combo though.

My MythTV system is currently 3x120GB IDE drives + XP2400 + 2 DVB cards and it's only around 120W. I would like to get that down though, the obvious solution being to have a single drive of course. They do spin down when they're idle.

Those Via boards don't actually need the full 120W, unless one fully tricks them out with the max number of USB2 devices, each drawing the max 0.5A@5VDC, etc..

My server here has a notebook drive, some LEDs, an extra ethernet PCI card, and not much else. The PSU is rated for 60W, but the whole danged thing only draws about 18-25W, depending on CPU activity.

Cheers