DIY Dual Atom Nettop System

As this is my first week of unemployment, I decided to spend some time assembling a low cost desktop system for simple tasks like email, web browsing and light office work. Sounds like a desktop version of a netbook, so I suppose nettop is an appropriate name, and I saw it used a few times as I was looking for components.

The first thing I found was the biggest surprise - a Dual Atom motherboard from Intel (D945GCLF2)! I didn't even know Intel made a dual Atom CPU, perhaps I haven't been paying enough attention? Anyway, in addition to the CPU it has the 945 GC Express chipset, which includes a GMA 950 graphic controller. Sounds even more like a netbook now, doesn't it? It also has 10/100/1000 LAN, four USB 2.0 ports, and of course the usual array of VGA, Parallel, Serial, and PS/2 connections. In fact the latter is another reason that I chose this board, because I still have quite a few PS/2 keyboards and trackballs around here that I would like to use with it, rather than having to buy everything new. It also has both ATA and SATA connections, and a single DDR2 667/533 SDRAM slot.

The motherboard form factor is Mini-ITX / MicroATX compatible, so I got an A+ Cupid 1 case. It is made to match the Intel board, so it has all the correct plugs and connectors, plus it adds front-panel sockets for two more USB ports, and a 56-in-1 memory card reader. I particularly liked the fact that this case uses an external power supply, like a laptop, which keeps the size and weight of the case down.

All I then had to add was 2 GB of DDR2 memory and a 160 GB SATA disk, and I had a complete system - total cost less than SFr 300, about 175 British Pounds. Note that there is no operating system listed - adding XP Professional would have cost SFr 160, which increases the cost by 50%!!! No thanks, I'll happily load a variety of Linux distributions, and I'll feel good about not paying the Microsoft Surcharge for my computer.

Plugging it all together took about an hour, being very careful at all times to double-check everything as I went. Almost all of the plugs are keyed, and many are color coded, so it is pretty easy to get it all right. Once I had it assembled, I connected a keyboard, mouse and display that I dragged out of the closet, and turned it on. The power on tests completed normally, and I got into the BIOS setup screen. Everything looked fine, it reported the correct amount of memory and the disk drive. I connected the USB CD/DVD drive that I use on the netbooks, put in the Ubuntu 9.04 Live CD, and rebooted.

Wow! It booted right up! Ubuntu saw all the hardware just fine, and even reported the CPU as a Quad-Atom system! Intel says that the hyperthreading in the Atom causes the Dual CPU to appear as four processors, so that is normal. I went ahead and installed Ubuntu, and was finished with that in 15 minutes, as usual. Boot the installed system, do my normal configuration and package installations, and it looks very, very good. Programs start and run quickly, including Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice.org.

Next I installed Mandriva One 2009.1 (Spring), and it was equally as easy and smooth to install. I chose to install their standard KDE version this time, since I have the Gnome version installed on my laptops.

Next up a bit bigger challenge - the Fedora 11 Preview. I have tried to install this on my laptops with no success, it always either crashes or hangs during installation. This time, though, it installed without any problems! Hooray! It looks good, too - a nice improvement over Fedora 10, at first glance. I'll be checking it out more over the weekend.

Then I decided to try the openSuSE 11.2 Milestone 2 distribution. This is another one that I have not been able to install on my laptops. The Live CD wouldn't boot on the nettop, the same as on my laptops. I downloaded the DVD distribution, and was able to install it, but then couldn't log in. I suspect that this is actually the same problem as with the Live CD, since in that case it is trying to login automatically on boot. So, I gave up on that one and went back to openSuSE 11.1. That installed perfectly, of course.

So now I have a very nice, small, quiet desktop system, which is so far multi-booting four good Linux distributions. I'll continue working with it over the weekend, install a couple more distributions, and see how it all works. So far I am quite pleased.

One last small note. As I said above, I used an external USB DVD/CD drive for the installations. The A+ Cupid case acutally has room for a slimline DVD/CD drive, so after I had the system running, I decided to order one of those as well. It came the next day, but unfortunately it requires a special cable with a single data/power connector on the drive, split to separate SATA and standard 4-pin power plugs. It only costs 12 francs, but you have to be sure to get it... or you get to wait a couple more days for it, as I am now.

jw 5/6/2009