EXPIRED fanless Intel® i3 Kaby Lake mini PC for $74.83

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WANg

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A cliffhanger! Could it have something to do with the mystery thermal pads that didn’t connect with anything on the 4660 (pictured back in post #35)?

I actually had an IEC 4650 sitting in my eBay watch list (along with a ton of other stuff stuff I don’t really need). So, now I’m curious too!
Well, be careful what you wish for.

So, a quick update of what I am using this current machine for...

ESXi7.png

IEC4650 Devices.png

Well, you can see that ESXi 7.0 U2 works just fine with its hardware. The issue here is that I am on the 32GB SATA M2 SSD at the moment.

32GB.png

So, what's in the chassis?
Eh, let's see. The usual 2 screws and 3 plastic latches...and then...

IMG_4469.png

IMG_4468.png


So, eh, 2 DDR3L SODIMM slots, an M.2 SATA/NVMe slot (key M) and a single PCIe slot for a Wifi/BT adapter..

IMG_4470.png

Looks like an Azurewave AW-CE123H Wifi5+BT card, and since its 2x2 it can do about 867Mbps in bandwidth using a Broadcom chipset.

So what's the big hidden feature on the bottom?
Well, it's not quite handled by the heatsinks (which still goes to nowhere, and my guess is that it’s there to cool off the ICH9M southbridge on the old CULV based IEC6410/6432s, which is not useful nowadays)...it's a microSATA (mSATA port).

IMG_4478.png


I pop a 128GB mSATA SSD and it's not detected after hours of fiddling with the BIOS options, so I am not sure if it's connected to the board or not. It might be mSATA DOMs only …which might have some interesting implications here as well.

IMG_4477.png
 
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zack$

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Aug 16, 2018
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Well, be careful what you wish for.

So, a quick update of what I am using this current machine for...

View attachment 19296

View attachment 19297

Well, you can see that ESXi 7.0 U2 works just fine with its hardware. The issue here is that I am on the 32GB SATA M2 SSD at the moment.

View attachment 19298

So, what's in the chassis?
Eh, let's see. The usual 2 screws and 3 plastic latches...and then...

View attachment 19299

View attachment 19300


So, eh, 2 DDR3L SODIMM slots, an M.2 SATA/NVMe slot (key M) and a single PCIe slot for a Wifi/BT adapter..

View attachment 19301

Looks like an Azurewave AW-CE123H Wifi5+BT card, and since its 2x2 it can do about 867Mbps in bandwidth using a Broadcom chipset.

So what's the big hidden feature on the bottom?
Well, it's not quite handled by the heatsinks (which still goes to nowhere, and my guess is that it’s there to cool off the ICH9M southbridge on the old CULV based IEC6410/6432s, which is not useful nowadays)...it's a microSATA (mSATA port).

View attachment 19302


I pop a 128GB mSATA SSD and it's not detected after hours of fiddling with the BIOS options, so I am not sure if it's connected to the board or not. It might be mSATA DOMs only …which might have some interesting implications here as well.

View attachment 19303
Could it be wwan only?

I know something like that has been implemented on the Dell Latitude series starting from e7480, where you no longer can swap with a ssd.
 

WANg

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I'm quite interested to see the underside of the board.

The included quickstart guide references the 466xx, 566xx, and the 766xx models. Looking at Moderro's "datasheets", the only differences I note between the 4660 and the 5660 is memory and storage. The three 766xx models appear to sport an i5, per this guide. I can't seem to find any info on the 766xx, models on their site or elsewhere. Has anyone seen these in the wild?
The 76xx might be a "special order" situation with large institutional customers.
The thing about the Moderro is that they sold the IEC4610/4632/4650 as a rebranded CIsco, and Cisco EOLed the entire IEP (interactive expeience platform) line and is only selling the 4660 as a "partner provided solution" replacement for the 4650 (last sale/ship August 2018 and end of support July 2022). I think that's the only "mass market" version available. In fact, my 4660 felt a bit like a Pre-production sample since the BIOS image seems like it included a bunch of stuff, and there is a socketed EEPROM.

That's kinda why I changed focus from the 4660 to the more plentiful 4650.

You can probably expect the following:

a) The 4650s will be dumped in the market for a pittance (already for pennies on the 4610/4632). They are still kinda nice as a very low power hypervisor box...the major headache is their DDR3L usage. This limits them to an economic RAM limit of 16GB (16GB DDR3L SODIMMs often quotes for almost the same price as 32GB DDR4 SODIMMs). Their minor headache is that mSATA port that might/might not be working.
b) The 4660s might be dumped if uptake for it is kinda poor (the entire Moderro IEP line is kinda niche...mostly used in hotels, casinos, airports and shopping malls, and once CIsco pulls out who knows if their customers will jump ship as well)
c) If the 4660 sales are good they might not be let go for cheap, and frankly, even at a quarter of the 2200 USD "ask" for it, a dualcore Kaby Lake i3 at 4-500 is a ridiculous price.
d) Any x6xx series Moderro will be rare, and any 56xx/76xx devices will be like a unicorn.
 

Fritz

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I put together an HTPC with this thing and I'm getting herky jerky video and sound playing files across the network. My Intel NUC doesn't do this. I'm running Mint Cinnamon 20.2 with 16GB of ram and a 256GB NVMe drive. Any Suggestions?

TIA
 

J--

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Quick Google says Mint will only install by default the open source drivers, which do not support Quicksync.


Some leads in this thread:

 

Markess

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The 4650s will be dumped in the market for a pittance
I bought one on Ebay yesterday for just under $50 shipped. Not quite a pittance, but its supposed to be new in the box with AC adapter and mount. It was in my watch list for a while and the seller sent an offer for more than 50% off the original asking.

...the major headache is their DDR3L usage.
Yeah, that is limiting, but I already have 8GB DDR3L SODIMMs in the parts bin, so I thought I'd give it a whirl with 16GB.

Their minor headache is that mSATA port that might/might not be working.
I bought shortly before you revealed the underside of the motherboard. The seller's offer was under my $50 threshold for an impulse buy, so I went for it. I'll try what cards I have when mine comes, & will of course report back if anything worked. Any chance its another Mini PCIe x1?
 

WANg

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I bought one on Ebay yesterday for just under $50 shipped. Not quite a pittance, but its supposed to be new in the box with AC adapter and mount. It was in my watch list for a while and the seller sent an offer for more than 50% off the original asking.

I bought shortly before you revealed the underside of the motherboard. The seller's offer was under my $50 threshold for an impulse buy, so I went for it. I'll try what cards I have when mine comes, & will of course report back if anything worked. Any chance its another Mini PCIe x1?
Well, I had a few extra parts to salvage from my IT department retired machines pool, so 8GB DDR3L SODIMMs are practically free from the fleet of retired and maxed out Penryn/Sandy/Ivy/Haswell laptops.

Oh, the open box guy? Yeah, I bought from him as well....was trying to lowball him into 50 USD including S&H, but he won't bite. I think I paid ~55 for mine. The Cisco branded IEC-4650s are actually pretty well put together machines (with a very decent mPCIe Wifi+BT card) - the Moderro 4660s are on the same casing but the internals are much more spartan (only the x6x0W machines features the wifi capabilities, which makes me wonder why they didn't just make a single board with a slot but no wifi slot...instead of making one with and one without). It's really too bad the 4660s are not taken up by Cisco...

One small issue though on the 4650?
I figure I'll give the M2 NVMe a try...and then I realized the M2 2280 card is too damned long. You can't even leave it like that since the top case/heatsink block sits on top of the M2 slot (in addition to the Wifi/BT and the CPU/SoC) and it'll simply not fit. I'll need an M2 2264 NVMe card to test this one out.

2280 cards are no good here.png


As for that slot on the bottom that I thought was a mSATA slot? Well...i have a Novatel Expedite E371 4G/LTE card just sitting around, so I figure that I'll give it a whirl.

Novatel E371.png

lspci -vvt doesn't show it in PartedMagic, but lsusb -vv does (I am guessing the card sits on the MiniPCIe slot but chooses to talk to the USB bus or the card acts as a PCIe USB bridge).
So yes, it's MiniPCIe x1. Although, this does present both a headache and an opportunity....

Note the 2 small pegs facing the bottom chassis (between the blue USB3 port pair and the 4 audio jacks) - that's the location of the PCIe x1 slot on the bottom, and you'll need to figure out a way to do something with it (Hmmmm....Intel i82574 based mPCIe network cards?).

Small Clearance.png

If I have to guess? Probably Dremel a hole on the left side (facing you on this photo) or the bottom so the ethernet port can be added.

How to Fit.png

But yeah, you can conceivably add 2 more NICs (one mPCIe and one more replacing the Wifi) to the machine and run it off the internal USB port ( the Starscream USB/LED/IR board up front should be USB2 based...?) It's not super-powerful but it'll run ESXi 7 and allow you to virtualize the SIP callpath for a small branch office on the cheap.

I might try to see if I can retrofit the IEC4650 chassis to fit inside/replace the guts of an old Sun Cobalt Qube3 server...

Or....it could be the essential ingredient in PROJECT GHETTOMINIMICRO - American International Pictures and Iceberg Slim @Patrick presents the Young American Saga of hustling bits and getting dat network flow working them corporate thin clients...

ghettominimicro.png

(Yeah, I really should brush up on Photoshop)
 
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Markess

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and then I realized the M2 2280 card is too damned long.
Okay, well that's sad. I think the SSD in my personal laptop is a 2260, but I'm not going to open it up for this. Guess I'll stick with what it comes with till I decide what crazy scheme I'm going to try with it.

Intel i82574 based mPCIe network cards?).
If you have one handy. Otherwise, I think they're going for as much as you paid for the box itself if you want Intel.

P.S. Since the CPU supports supports VT-D, you could create a ZFS pool from USB flash drives and run a half dozen VMs. No spinning disks for you...all solid state storage. Very chic.
 
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Fritz

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Quick Google says Mint will only install by default the open source drivers, which do not support Quicksync.


Some leads in this thread:

This is clear as mud. :(

Decided to load Windows on it. Does anyone if drivers are available for download?
 

Markess

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This is clear as mud. :(

Decided to load Windows on it. Does anyone if drivers are available for download?

Sorry to hear you're having issues with Linux. I don't know if there are Windows drivers, but if you still have Mint installed, I believe I may be able to get you through the driver/codec install.

I didn't speak up before, because I'm not a Mint user (I use Ubuntu Mate normally) and hoped someone with more experience might help. Part of the Mint "mindset" is that Free/Open Source should be enough for folks to start with. You can add the proprietary stuff later though, but sadly its not one click, or download and click and run. If Linux is your jam, then its not hard. If it's not your comfort zone....well a bit harder.

Ubuntu Mate (maybe regular Ubuntu, I haven't used it lately) is more accepting of starting off with proprietary code, so there's a click box ot one point in the install process to select that the installer go ahead and install all the proprietary stuff that applies to your hardware configuration. Sometimes the installer mis-identifies or misses something in the system, but I've found that for pretty normal hardware its super accurate. And even though this is an odd piece of hardware, the individual components inside are pretty common.

If you'd like help with Mint or a different Linux, shoot me a PM and I'll see if I can get you through setup.
 
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Fritz

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Sorry to hear you're having issues with Linux. I don't know if there are Windows drivers, but if you still have Mint installed, I believe I may be able to get you through the driver/codec install.

I didn't speak up before, because I'm not a Mint user (I use Ubuntu Mate normally) and hoped someone with more experience might help. Part of the Mint "mindset" is that Free/Open Source should be enough for folks to start with. You can add the proprietary stuff later though, but sadly its not one click, or download and click and run. If Linux is your jam, then its not hard. If it's not your comfort zone....well a bit harder.

Ubuntu Mate (maybe regular Ubuntu, I haven't used it lately) is more accepting of starting off with proprietary code, so there's a click box ot one point in the install process to select that the installer go ahead and install all the proprietary stuff that applies to your hardware configuration. Sometimes the installer mis-identifies or misses something in the system, but I've found that for pretty normal hardware its super accurate. And even though this is an odd piece of hardware, the individual components inside are pretty common.

If you'd like help with Mint or a different Linux, shoot me a PM and I'll see if I can get you through setup.
Thanks Markess. I did go ahead and load Windows and it did install the correct driver (I think). I haven't tried it out yet as a HTPC. I do have a laundry list of items in device manager the are unknown tho. I'm going to see if it works playing video files before I proceed. If it works then I'll deal with the unknown devices. If not then I'll go back to Linux, may even go with another distro. I love Linux but there are some things about it that are just waaaaay too hard to deal with. I have learned tho that Nvidia is the best video device if you have the option.
 
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WANg

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Thanks Markess. I did go ahead and load Windows and it did install the correct driver (I think). I haven't tried it out yet as a HTPC. I do have a laundry list of items in device manager the are unknown tho. I'm going to see if it works playing video files before I proceed. If it works then I'll deal with the unknown devices. If not then I'll go back to Linux, may even go with another distro. I love Linux but there are some things about it that are just waaaaay too hard to deal with. I have learned tho that Nvidia is the best video device if you have the option.
Well, nVidia cards are its own basket of dicks, really. Their drivers are binary only so the effort involved in getting them with work with Linux is a bit hacky (Linux driver writers prefer their hardware drivers to be derived from the low level level information on the hardware, which nVidia considers to be trade secrets). Most of the nVidia provided driver stuff connects to the rest of Linux using software shims, and while it usually works well, it's nearly impossible to troubleshoot issues when it doesn't, since it's all connecting to a black box. It's nice when it works, but when it doesn't, it's a pain.

The open source nVidia driver (nouveau) is based on reverse engineering nVidia hardware but progress is slow and based on volunteer work. The nVidia stuff is usually found on the bigger machines anyways as I don't recall nVidia doing a motherboard graphics chipset since the old MCP79/89s from 10 years back, and you don't get nVidia hardware stock on most machines.

That being said, if someone found a recent x86 based digital signage box with embedded nVidia GPU hardware, I'll be very interested.
 

Patrick

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Or....it could be the essential ingredient in PROJECT GHETTOMINIMICRO - American International Pictures and Iceberg Slim @Patrick presents the Young American Saga of hustling bits and getting dat network flow working them corporate thin clients...

View attachment 19312

(Yeah, I really should brush up on Photoshop)
Ha! This one made my day.
 

Fritz

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I've managed to resolve all the driver problems except for 1.

PCI Data Acquisition and Signal Processing Controller

PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_9D27&SUBSYS_500514CD&REV_21


Google returns nothing. Anyone know what this is and where I might find a driver?

O joy, I found it. It's actually an Intel Serial IO device. I now have a clean device manger. :)

 
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Markess

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Well, nVidia cards are its own basket of dicks, really.
I know this thread is slowly drifting off topic, but that was such a clear and succinct description! Bravo! :p

When I put my current desktop together, it was an easy decision to passthrough the Nvidia GPU to the Windows VM, and use the AMD one for the host system (Ubuntu Mate 20.04 at the moment). The Quadro behaves VERY NICELY on Windows and doesn't suffer from the AMD VM disconnect issue, while the Radeon Pro runs perfectly on the seemingly mature and stable open source AMDGPU driver. I'm happy all around.

That being said, if someone found a recent x86 based digital signage box with embedded nVidia GPU hardware, I'll be very interested.
I think that Nvidia's current "embedded" Signage/Video Wall solution includes "embedded" Quadro P2200 or T1000. These are discrete PCIe cards (as opposed to mobile), and I don't know what the difference is between the "embedded" and desktop/workstation models. Maybe just software? In any case, I assume it won't be an inexpensive or super compact box if its got a full size P2200 or a T1000 in it.
 
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Fritz

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Just took it for a test drive. Watched a documentary on the death of the sun in 1080p. Video was fine but the onboard sound sucks. Plugged in a USB sound card I bought for 20 bucks years ago and it fixed it nicely.
 

WANg

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Just took it for a test drive. Watched a documentary on the death of the sun in 1080p. Video was fine but the onboard sound sucks. Plugged in a USB sound card I bought for 20 bucks years ago and it fixed it nicely.
Eh, considering that I ran my 4660 during testing on my LCD monitor with a USB headset, I didn’t even notice audio issues.