Re-Use Older SoMs?

1

After getting the new RK3588, I’ll soon have two older compute modules evicted from my pocket reform: the NXP it came with and the A311D I upgraded to previously. Is there a cost-effective way to re-use these SoMs in a small desktop form factor, like mini ITX or something? I definitely would prefer these computers to the Raspberry Pi as my little home servers of choice, if this is possible.

The only thing I can think of is to buy a “spare” MNT (Pocket?) Reform motherboard, and somehow jam it into a case with a desktop power supply. But I don’t know if I should expect motherboards to be on sale as individual parts ever again, given all the chip and component shortages. A “big” MNT motherboard would probably be preferable for this application given the extra I/O it comes with, especially standard Ethernet.

I know that MNT Rack Reform is coming and I am very excited about using that to replace my big home server. I hope it will be sold without a compute module so it will provide a home for one of my older modules. Does that make economic sense for MNT, or should we expect all the computers going forward to come with a SoM…?

Anyway, the little home server and small form factor computer application is very different from and more space/power constrained than the Rack: stuff like being hooked up to a TV for video playback and retro emulation, deposited in a friends house to host backups unobtrusively, etc.

Any suggestions about what I can jury-rig or information about future plans welcome. I look forward to a glorious future where pretty much all my computational devices are MNT-powered.

6 Likes
2

Yes, we’ve been working on this topic on and off and have some new grant applications going to fund the work on reusing our motherboards and SoMs in desktop/server cases.

15 Likes
3

I would love to be able to build a MNT NAS from older boards!

6 Likes
4

I would really like to be able to reuse SoM’s between my turingpi, MNT and uconsole. I know that requires figuring the pinouts and updating firmware/drivers.

1 Like
5

I fully agree, it ia an excellent idea

1 Like
6

Are there updates on this? I bet i missed something.

Anyways, I’d be interested in trying out an iMX server/desktop to use as an Implant_node for a distributed computing project called cybersyn.

I think that the iMX8 is open hardware, uses very limited firmware blobs and would be quite powerful as an implant. Which is what i’m looking for and that is awesome!

1 Like
7

Hi,
Since February 2026, I’ve been working on a distributed data center model: https://www.mith.systems

This all stems from my frustration with how Big Tech handles both my digital and physical life.
I do all the development using my MNT Reform laptop, running Linux with only open-source software plus my own glue layers.
On the hardware side, in this phase I developed a security and health circuit to manage ARM SBC nodes. The next step is to build my own SBC—MNT did most of the work. My final roadmap is to design the silicon with no blobs at all.

Current status is post-POC, in fact my website is running in one VM in a distributed node

Love to hear about distributed models

1 Like