By Doug Schaefer
At the Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose this year they handed
out little VIA embedded EPIA systems to the attendees. I'm not sure
everyone got one, but I was thrilled. It has a embedded VIA processor
with a chipset that includes Unichrome 3D graphics, and also include a
hard drive, ethernet, VGA, four USB ports, and audio in and out. It's a
cool little unit.
I
haven't done too much with it, but thinking about this Open Console
concept (set top box with 3D graphics running Linux), I thought I'd try
setting it up with some of the things I had in mind. I started by
putting the Debian lenny installer onto a USB stick and installing from
it. That was a little tricky until I reformated my USB stick and put
syslinux on it properly. I installed enough packages to get X running
with the openchrome driver for 3D graphics. glxgears ran pretty
smoothly which gave me some hope I could actually use this thing to run
games.
