1. Be able to work on a Mini-ITX system(Video,net,sound)
2. Full USB 2.0 (HD,CD,KEY,Mouse)
3. Be able to install on to a USB-HD and boot off the USB-HD
hmm.... I think thats it

I'm try to make a full USB system use the Mini-ITX system
I have try some diff distributions but they would not install/see then USB-HD
I would like to use the system mostly for playing Divx files with Mplayer on TV but i would also like it to be a fully usable system(Web,E-mail)

thank you for any help

Very few systems will boot from a USB device - it is just too finiky at the moment (especially when there is a big variation on how usb storage devices communicate). You could possibly do so if you had a small harddisk attached normally (ata, sata, scsi). You would need to setup your bootloader to read the kernel from the local disk, and make an initrd image (inital ramdisk) to do the rest like identifying the usb drive, and continuing the boot process from there.

If that makes sense, and you're inclined to do so, then go for it!

Yes, I know many systems can't boot from USB yet
But the mini ITX are able to boot for USB and I was able to get Mandrake to install and boot up the loader but not the OS....
I tryed RH9 but its was unable to see the USB-HD to install on to it...same with Slackware 9 and debian...
and Suse was not able so see the network to install but did see the USB HD

any tips? or can it not be do yet?
I know i can keep try diff distribution, but it takes me time to download the ISO....

Thank you for any help

When you installed it, where did you install it - what I mean is did the installation see your USB hardrive as a scsi device?

The way I'm thinking is that what needs to be done is your USB device support enabled as part of your initrd image. If you plug your USB harddrive into another Linux machine, mount it, copy over the appropriate initrd image file, mount it (it is simply an ext2 filesystem 'iso' file that has been gzipped), copy the relevant kernel modules over (make sure the modules you're copying are for the same kernel version as the one you're booting) and then save. Give it a go!

Alternatively, if you have a cdrom drive attached to this machine, you could run something like freevix, geexbox, etc - designed to run from the CD and play media files from a harddrive.

only two distribution that i tryed could see the USB HD
Mandrake and Suse
They see the USB HD as a scsi device
What i would lie to do its just put the mobo in a small box with out any drives...so freevix, geexbox, etc will not work for what I'm try to do

this is a bit over my head but its sounds fun
a bit more info before I try this

Anymore ideas?
Thank you Thymox for all your help

What I meant was... if your mobo can boot from USB devices - can it boot from a USB cd drive? If so, you could boot from that using something like freevix and load the videos from the USB harddrive.

I'm planning a similar project, which will require a boot from a minimal USB storage, are there any distributions that keep fairly minimal logs etc. or even log to ramdisk, so to preserve the life of a USB "Memory" type disk.

Also anybody know of any distros that can be easily setup on small say 10mb Drive?

Actually thinking about this overnight, my system might be best done, with a NetBoot, with the PXE in a USB Keyring, or similar, I wonder if anyone has done that before.

A Qucik search this morning suggests that Koppix is goot for net boots, I might have to have a play with that.

Yeah that be cool if i could do that but i would want to do more then just watch movies....but its a start
Thank you for all you help