Followup on the AMS gBOX CF-S868 Pentium 4 System

by flung
9/12/2002
WhiningDog.NET

Introduction

I thought it would be cool to write a followup article on the gBOX Pentium 4 since a number of people have asked me some questions with regards to the gBOX. Thus instead of writing a forum reply, I thought i'd put up some pics and write some text in a page instead. Here goes nothing

Infrared port

I'm not sure how many of you actually thought about using the infrared port but one user did ask me about it so I thought - well gee how do I get that port working? The key to this is to enable it in the BIOS. You'll have to traverse to the "integrated peripherals" section of the BIOS and then check out the "Super I/O Device" selection. Once you're in that menu item - you will seee a menu selection for "UART Mode Select". Select the IrDA and then save and exit the BIOS. Upon rebooting, Windows XP will detect that you now have an infrared port installed. On my system it appears that it used up COM2. After rebooting,here's what the device manager looked like to me under Windows XP.

That's right - there's your infrared port. So what can we do with this? Well I brought my laptop over (which is an IBM Thinkpad T21) and it automatically found a computer nearby via the infrared port. What computer was that? The gBOX of course! Windows XP Professional provides a strange sound whenever something is located by the IrDA port. So that begs for us to ask the question - what's the point of this port? Well I suppose it makes a nice easy transfer mechanism for those who have laptops and PDAs. I can imagine someone using a PocketPC to sync their data such as the HP iPaq. If you can think of other uses - post it in the forums! In any case, it's nice to see that the infrared port does work and that those who use laptops have a PC that they can wirelessly communicate to. Yes if you have an 802.11b network then this is all moot but it's just yet another mechanism to deliver data right?

ATI Radeon 8500DV

Ok I know a lot of you have had problems with the Radeon 8500DV and the gBOX. For whatever reason, I was able to get mine to work albeit with some difficulties. The first thing to note is that some gBOX owners had to modify their motherboards in order for the card to work in their systems. Here are some pictures of what I am talking about. You'll notice that the pins near the back of the motherboard are bent down. Now I know I did a fairly bad job of bending those pins but I was trying to figure out why my system would not POST at the time and then I thought - hey.. those pins are touching the Radeon!!

Here's the Radeon 8500 DV	Here's a side profile	Look at what I did!

Here's what Device Manager looks like for me under Windows XP Pro:

So why are so many people still having problems you might ask? Honestly, I don't really have a clue. I provided some of my BIOS settings in a thread in our forums but that may or may not work for you. Ultimately I believe that there's a conflict somewhere between some iterations of the board and the 8500DV. Hopefully AMS and Chyang Fun will have a solution to this ultimately.

A little too hot for you?

A number of people have written about whether I've had any troubles heat wise with the gBOX Pentium 4 CF-S868 unit. In short - No. Yes the system does get very hot when compared to larger tower systems or even the Shuttle SS51G. The gBOX feels a bit more cramped internally than the SS51G mostly because of the inclusion of that fan on the processor's heatsink. I believe that if AMS went the route of a heatpipe technology, you'd get lower temps. With that said, my HTPC temps are around 57C with load. It should be noted that it used to be around 59-60C on load before I got a slot cooler from Antec. If you have a free PCI or AGP slot to work with - then definitely consider adding a slot cooler in there. They are cheap and offer a silent way to cool your system some more. Don't worry about the power draw. I haven't personally run into any problems with power as of yet. Again, your heat temps will probably differ from mine depending on whether you use the included Akura heatsink or you use say the Intel heatsink. The intel heatsinks are quieter BUT they do not work as well in dissipating heat. The akura fans are louder but perform better. If anyone has or knows of another low profile P4 heatsink, do let us know.

Thanks about it for now. These are just some of the bigger questions I normally get about the gBOX. It's a very nice system though it does have it's flaws here and there. The system I built for my HTPC setup has worked just fine however so I hope you will enjoy yours if you do have one too. Feel free to comment in our forums