Author Topic: Another odd request  (Read 13290 times)

ivan

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Another odd request
« on: April 15, 2019, 12:07:00 am »
I am now thinking of updating the mini-ITX motherboard that hangs on the back of one of my monitors.  The problem is that it needs to have an AM4 socket to allow the use of an AMD Ryzen 3 2200G processor with its integrated graphics processor.

I have considered an ASRock Fatal1ty AB350 Gaming board which would allow dual booting with Linux Mint for such times I want to play games.

Does anyone have any experience with this board or any other AM4 socketed mini-ITX boards that they could comment on?

The attachments show the proposed board and the case it is to go in (to give an idea of size if the case the DVD drive is standard width but only 9.5mm high).

Olafur Gunnlaugsson

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Re: Another odd request
« Reply #1 on: April 15, 2019, 05:57:32 pm »
Sadly I have not had the opportunity. I did try out this lovely Mini-STX thing below about a week ago, had very limited time in its presence but it appeared to  run ECS 2.1 OK with the UEFI CSM enabled or at the least with only minor problems, sadly no PCIe slot so only VESA graphics ...

https://www.asrock.com/nettop/AMD/DeskMini%20A300%20Series/

ivan

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Re: Another odd request
« Reply #2 on: April 15, 2019, 07:45:15 pm »
Thanks for that information.  It is the follow on to the ASRock AM1H-ITX board that also uses an external DC power supply.  The thing that makes it a deal breaker for me is its use of SODIM memory modules (I have several 4GB DDR4 standard units available).

Roderick Klein

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Re: Another odd request
« Reply #3 on: April 15, 2019, 08:40:33 pm »
Sadly I have not had the opportunity. I did try out this lovely Mini-STX thing below about a week ago, had very limited time in its presence but it appeared to  run ECS 2.1 OK with the UEFI CSM enabled or at the least with only minor problems, sadly no PCIe slot so only VESA graphics ...

https://www.asrock.com/nettop/AMD/DeskMini%20A300%20Series/

But this mainboard, from what I can tell it only has USB 3.0 ?  And the two SATA slots are connected to M2 slots ?
How far did eCS 2.1 work ? Did mouse and keyboard work ?

Roderick

ivan

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Re: Another odd request
« Reply #4 on: April 15, 2019, 11:58:20 pm »
Hi Roderick,

The SATA connectors are entirely separate from the M2 slots, (see attachment 1) and from what I have been able to find out you can have 2 sata disks and 2 M2 sticks all working together.

The USB might be a problem but on all the other ASRock  mini-itx boards that I have used (AM1 socket) they have dedicated USB 2,0 sockets where they say they do.  If that holds true for this board then the USB 2.0 socket on the rear panel should work with a USB 2.0 Y cable for keyboard and mouse.  Checking on the bios setup there is a switch to allow win7 USB wake support and since win doesn't come with USB 3.1, I think we can assume the USB 2.0 ports are real USB 2.0 as allowed for in the chipset tables.

Pete

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Re: Another odd request
« Reply #5 on: April 16, 2019, 02:19:45 am »
Hi ivan

Have you considered using a wireless mouse and keyboard with a "unifier" receiver - eg https://www.logitech.com/en-gb/product/11052?crid=1759 - rather than a "USB 2.0 Y cable for keyboard and mouse"?

Makes for a neater desktop  :-)


Regards

Pete

ivan

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Re: Another odd request
« Reply #6 on: April 16, 2019, 04:11:53 pm »
Hi Pete,

That might be an idea if I can find a wireless optical trackball with a minimum 40mm ball that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.  I also have a very good bluetooth keyboard that I use with my Samsung Android tablets but OS/2 / ArcaOS doesn't have bluetooth drivers.

At the moment I'm still considering the Fatal1ty board because it has more options, the A300 is limited by its size.

Pete

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Re: Another odd request
« Reply #7 on: April 16, 2019, 06:09:24 pm »
Hi ivan

I could suggest the Logitech M570 which, if shopped for carefully, only costs about half an arm eg https://www.ebay.co.uk/p/Logitech-M570-910-002090-Wireless-Trackball/113893903

It costs more when buying direct from Logitech https://www.logitech.com/en-gb/product/wireless-trackball-m570

I have 2 of these and they are lovely to use *but* on checking the ball size it is not quite as large as you would like at approximately 35mm. Might be worth a look....


Regards

Pete

Olafur Gunnlaugsson

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Re: Another odd request
« Reply #8 on: April 16, 2019, 06:46:55 pm »
The SATA connectors are entirely separate from the M2 slots, (see attachment 1) and from what I have been able to find out you can have 2 sata disks and 2 M2 sticks all working together.

Have you (or anyone else) used an AM4 or other modern board with NVME M.2 hard drive installed alongside SATA drive? Does the CSM (Bios Emulator) see the NVME  drives?

I was wondering about this since I dual boot from two different drives, with the OS/2 drive being hidden by airboot when Windows runs and vice versa and was hoping I could do the same with Win on NVME and OS/2 on SATA.

Olafur Gunnlaugsson

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Re: Another odd request
« Reply #9 on: April 16, 2019, 06:51:54 pm »
I could suggest the Logitech M570 which, if shopped for carefully, only costs about half an arm eg https://www.ebay.co.uk/p/Logitech-M570-910-002090-Wireless-Trackball/113893903

It costs more when buying direct from Logitech https://www.logitech.com/en-gb/product/wireless-trackball-m570

I have 2 of these and they are lovely to use *but* on checking the ball size it is not quite as large as you would like at approximately 35mm. Might be worth a look....

Great price for the ebay one, but do you know if it has any better resolution than the Logitech "marble mouse" trackball? On 1600 x 900 screens or higher the marble becomes hopelessly slow in OS/2 and jerky in Win as the software attempts to interpolate ....

ivan

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Re: Another odd request
« Reply #10 on: April 16, 2019, 07:16:04 pm »
Don't know about the Logitech units but I have almost always used https://www.kensington.com/p/products/control/trackballs/orbit-optical-trackball/ the Kensington units (I have 6 of them about the house) with 1920x1200 monitors and I have to play with the settings to stop the pointer flying off the screen.

Pete

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Re: Another odd request
« Reply #11 on: April 16, 2019, 09:08:16 pm »
Hi Olafur

No idea how it compares with the Logitech "marble mouse" but it works fine on a monitor running at 1920 * 1080 - I know this for sure as otherwise my Mrs would tell me all about it  ;-)

Checking the mouse settings I see that Tracking is cranked up all the way - not the fastest pointer but very acceptable I think, compares well with the identical trackball on my 1280 * 1024 monitor.


Regards

Pete

Andreas Schnellbacher

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Re: Another odd request
« Reply #12 on: April 16, 2019, 09:25:09 pm »
Have you (or anyone else) used an AM4 or other modern board with NVME M.2 hard drive installed alongside SATA drive? Does the CSM (Bios Emulator) see the NVME  drives?
I've read that we need an NVMe driver, analogous to the AHCI driver, for that.

ivan

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Re: Another odd request
« Reply #13 on: April 17, 2019, 12:32:14 am »
Hi Pete,

Another problem with the Logitech wireless trackball is that it is for right handed use and I'm left handed hence my use of the kensington ambidextrous trackball.

Olafur,

I haven't tried using a M.2 card as a disk in any of my Ryzen units because at the moment I am using hybrid FireCuda disks but I think they may need a  modified AHCI driver to be able to use them even in AHCI mode.

At the moment the biggest problem with AM4, and I think Intel, boards is the total lack of USB 3.1 drivers.  There are workrounds but they are pretty and don't work very well in an industrial setting - too many cables hanging off the back with adapters plugged into adapters which can work lose.

Olafur Gunnlaugsson

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Re: Another odd request
« Reply #14 on: April 17, 2019, 12:53:24 am »
Have you (or anyone else) used an AM4 or other modern board with NVME M.2 hard drive installed alongside SATA drive? Does the CSM (Bios Emulator) see the NVME  drives?
I've read that we need an NVMe driver, analogous to the AHCI driver, for that.

I do not mean a driver for the OS, but rather that the UEFI BIOS emulator sees it after initial boot so that I can use airboot from the MBR on the SATA to choose the boot partition, rather than having to rely on the Microsoft UEFI OS Switcher, it works with OS/2 with some massaging, but does not hide partitions like airboot does.