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pico-itx case arrives

I got the case for the pico-ITX motherboard yesterday evening from iDOTpc. This is the case that sold out in one day — twice! I could not wait to get it out of the box and install the motherboard and hard drive. In hindsight, maybe I should have been a little more patient.

I had no trouble taking the case apart, putting the motherboard into the case, and putting the heat sink on top of the motherboard. If you have never seen this case, the top of the cas is the heat sink itself, connected to the processor and port handler by a copper U-tube and a solid block of metal glued with thermal paste. Nor did I have trouble with the hard drive and its bracket. Those were simple when you followed the instructions.

However, the instructions do not tell you what to do when you run into the following:

• The ports on the front panel of the case have their own board with a ribbon cable connector. The case comes with a daughterboard that hooks up with most of the ports on the mobo; it has its own ribbon cable connector. Both connectors come with thin plastic clasps. The clasps are fragile; and although the instructions tell you to handle them gently, sometimes it is hard to be gentle with a clasp that is stuck — and then it breaks. I have asked iDOTpc about a new daughterboard. Now I will get to see how good its customer service is.
• The power supply in the case is the same type as the one I bought to test the motherboard, except that it seems underpowered. When I plug in my power cable, the power supply comes on and the hard drive runs; but nothing else happens: Ubuntu does not start. Now, when I plug in the other power supply to the mobo and the hard drive, Ubuntu starts up at once.
• Next comes space: With the 'bulk' of the power supply and its cables in the case, I had trouble getting the hard disk and its bracket back in the case.
• Then there is the problem of the power cables themselves. What is a power supply for a case like this doing with a power cable for a floppy-diskette drive? That should have been removed at once. I had to do it myself with snips.