Motherboards w/single PCI slot

capacitor · Post by **capacitor** » Fri Apr 25, 2008 11:08 am

Howdy,

I'm looking for a tiny motherboard, to support a single Pulsar card. Any ideas?

Basically as small a package as possible.

Shroomz~> · Post by **Shroomz~>** » Fri Apr 25, 2008 11:35 am

Hey there!

Astroman had one running in a mini ITX. I'm sure he described the performance etc on the forum. Should be easy to find if you run a search. I can't think of smaller solution right now.

capacitor · Post by **capacitor** » Fri Apr 25, 2008 11:46 am

Hehehe - I need to RTFF

I'm going as small and fanless as practical. This will be life support for a single Pulsar or Luna.

Here's a possibility: http://www.aicsys.com/sbh-4218a2gnl.php

The idea is that the motherboard connects to the Pulsar via a dual PCI backplane. That & a small power supply, and I think I'm set. This is a custom tube guitar amp - I have a lot of leeway regarding the enclosure.

I'll check out Astroman's setup as well, and thanks. BTW, thanks for a whole lot of good stuff I'm finding here with your name on it

Shroomz~> · Post by **Shroomz~>** » Fri Apr 25, 2008 12:23 pm

Ah, now you're talking. That's definately a small package!!

Sounds like an interesting project.

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Fri Apr 25, 2008 1:10 pm

Capacitor, the ITX project actually wasn't the most enjoyable experience...

first - I bought the mini board too early, the heatpipe-equippend version wasn't released yet - impossible to run the thingy without a fan...
to verify that it would be operable at all with a Pulsar, I cludged it together on a table and it seemed to work, even with a decent Masterverb result.
The latter surprised me due to it's VIA heritage

so I ordered a 1-unit rackmount supposed for mini-itx and a 90 degree slot adapter, which took over a month to deliver... and then it lacked half an inch in depth to properly house a Pulsar One.
Ok, my fault - the pictures suggested enough space and I didn't measure...

I cut out a piece from the front panel, so the card would fit in (I would later add a nice piece of wood or so to make it look good), put everything together and ended with a (ground?) noise horror.
Starting at -55db and no better than 68 or so, while I usually have -80 to 85 dB

I suspected the PSU might be too weak, or the board had a flaw from laying around - strangely I don't remember such noise from the first test.

This wasn't a priority project - I only worked now and then on it, but in fact one of it's intentions was to have some mobile guitar fx unit - SpaceF's Echo and Celmo's Amp Sim in the first place ...

If you also want to use a Pulsar One, then check the chipset first - I may not remember it correctly, but the 915 might be incompatible with generation one boards
AndreD once mentioned something like this, I just don't remember the precise number, sorry.
I currently have the Pulsars in a 946 and that seems flawless.

cheers, Tom

Shroomz~> · Post by **Shroomz~>** » Fri Apr 25, 2008 2:49 pm

Hey Tom, how many people do think bought 1u rack chassis' & riser cards over the years, with the eventual conclusion that... it didn't actually fit. Don't fret about it.

capacitor · Post by **capacitor** » Sat Apr 26, 2008 8:46 am

Thanks for all this info, it is very helpful. I *should* be able to handle grounding and noise issues, maybe with some custom filtering and mu metal. Going to be interesting

It is going to be more of an integrated design, rather than an effects loop.

I'll rtff and summarize what I find regarding chipsets.