vuxu.org: Walu

Tanit is a “T-bao N100 Mini” tiny desktop PC with a 3.4GHz Intel N100 CPU, 16GB RAM and a 512GB ASint AS806 NVMe SSD (€164.99).

The naming

Walu) is a sun deity in the mythology of the Yolŋu of Arnhem Land.

Disassembly

Remove the four screws on the bottom, then pry it open from the notch.

In the bottom of the case, a 2.5”-SATA disk can be installed.

Setup

I was bored and installed Gentoo for fun…

Hardware trouble

The Realtek NIC needs a patch on kernels older than 6.10:

# lspci -tvnn
-[0000:00]-+-00.0  Intel Corporation Device [8086:461c]
           +-02.0  Intel Corporation Alder Lake-N [UHD Graphics] [8086:46d1]
           +-0a.0  Intel Corporation Platform Monitoring Technology [8086:467d]
           +-14.0  Intel Corporation Alder Lake-N PCH USB 3.2 xHCI Host Controller [8086:54ed]
           +-14.2  Intel Corporation Alder Lake-N PCH Shared SRAM [8086:54ef]
           +-14.3  Intel Corporation CNVi: Wi-Fi [8086:54f0]
           +-15.0  Intel Corporation Device [8086:54e8]
           +-16.0  Intel Corporation Alder Lake-N PCH HECI Controller [8086:54e0]
           +-17.0  Intel Corporation Alder Lake-N SATA AHCI Controller [8086:54d3]
           +-1a.0  Intel Corporation Device [8086:54c4]
           +-1c.0-[01]----00.0  Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8211/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller [10ec:8168]
           +-1c.6-[02]----00.0  Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8211/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller [10ec:8168]
           +-1d.0-[03]----00.0  Silicon Motion, Inc. SM2263EN/SM2263XT (DRAM-less) NVMe SSD Controllers [126f:2263]
           +-1e.0  Intel Corporation Alder Lake-N Serial IO UART Host Controller [8086:54a8]
           +-1e.3  Intel Corporation Device [8086:54ab]
           +-1f.0  Intel Corporation Alder Lake-N PCH eSPI Controller [8086:5481]
           +-1f.3  Intel Corporation Alder Lake-N PCH High Definition Audio Controller [8086:54c8]
           +-1f.4  Intel Corporation Alder Lake-N SMBus [8086:54a3]
           \-1f.5  Intel Corporation Alder Lake-N SPI (flash) Controller [8086:54a4]

The WiFi chip (AX101) seems to crash often.

lspci

ethernet patch

wifi hack

tbd bluetooth?

Power usage

Measured using a REV Ritter EMT717ACTL: During boot, peak ~20 W. Idle on Linux 6.8 ~8 W. All cores fully used, ~19 W (with I/O stress, ~27 W). One core fully used, ~15 W.

Even under full load, the case stays acceptably warm and the fans are quite silent.