Slashdot Mirror

Why ARM? I get the impression that you think it will cope better with the heat by generating less of it, not that it will do better dealing with the expected workload. That impression is reinforced by the fact that you seem more concerned about the heat than the cold.

Solving the correct problem is step one in engineering. Choose a ruggedized industrial solution that has been designed to deal with those temperature ranges. A proven design will easily operate at 50 Celsius, which is hotter than the hottest temperature ever recorded in Texas, although some airflow (and shade!) is helpful when the temperatures climb that high. Similarly, the lowest temperature ever recorded in Texas is -30C, so why the hell are you looking for -37C?

You don't get any big-dick points for over-engineering.

Advantech was just the first industrial vendor that spring to mind. There are others, easily found with the power of google. https://www.advantech.com/succ...|pd=industrial%20communication

Lots of sources, here is one , Industrial keyboards are rated IP65 or IP68 and can include a mouse button, joy-stick, mousepad, or numeric keypad. Hopefully apple is trying to do something other than patent state of the art industrial keyboards.

Oh rendering still is done on a farm, but don't underestimate just how much effort goes into making that GPU fan spin while modelling.

But I came up with anther one looking farther down in the replies. There's a bitching about HEVC vs AV1 and hardware decoders. ... Video editors, the once bread and butter of Apple. They may have some desire to either upgrade their GPU for something which processes some CUDA code faster or, something more dedicated like this: http://www.advantech.com/produ..., though I note that they don't list Mac as being supported.

Try convincing someone of a video product not supporting mac 10 years ago ....

A *lot* of funky SCADA software. In 2012 built another MS-DOS 6.22-based data acquisition server (which is still in use, along with the others) using incredibly overpriced (albeit reliable) bits from Advantech, 16-bit ISA cards and all. The application's last update was 1996, not quite 20 years but getting there. Slightly less ancient data acquisition software runs in parallel with nicer looking reports and modern export formats, but isn't as reliable. The DOS machine, as clunky and ugly as it is, just absolutely refuses to ever fail. And I can't say that disaster recovery in an environment without any internet connectivity (drivers? activation? updates? etc.) is any worse with MS-DOS: transplanting the windows software from one installation to the next is actually quite traumatic compared to "let's just dd this image to a new CF-Card and boot from that"...

Also, did some work last year on an impressively large website with many millions of hits per month whose codebase began circa 1997. I should tell them perl 5.19 has dropped CGI.pm from the core distribution, heh

Specs for the CPU itself seem oddly hard to come by. However, it looks like there are some barebones/appliance systems shipping based on it:

This reports the 847E has having Intel HD2000. Performance should be nice and dreadful; but it should at least work fairly smoothly.

This one isn't as informative on the spec sheet; but the VGA driver download, when I tested it, refers only to support for processors with some Intel HD graphics, not any of the atom models with powerVR crap.

I'll wait for somebody else to bite; but my money would be on a low-clocked; but reasonably well supported, Intel GPU.

Fanless computers for industrial automation, for example the ones made by Advantech can take LOTS of abuse. They work at coke battery plant, steel plant, sintering plant, ... places that can be at least as hostile as a desert.

A nice example is here:
http://www.advantech.com/eAutomation/fanless-box-pcs/Default.aspx

You're either not looking or your google-fu is weak. 136,000 hits. I can recommend advantech, but there are literally tons of models available, in singles or quantity.

If you want to perform temperature measurements in a cold storage warehouse don't use PC's at all. Instead use an Adam 6018 in a Nema 4 or Nema 12 electrical enclosure with a thermostatically controlled heater. The cost of this implementation versus PC data acquisition will likely be an order of magnitude less. Wire the devices together with Cat5 made for low temperature environments. The insulation on regular Cat5 will become very brittle in the freezer.

Some tips for dealing with the Adam 6018... The sample applet included with the device only works under Java 1.3.0_04. The Adam technical help will not be able to tell you this. Your best bet is to use the MODBUS/TCP protocol to query the device. You don't have to know much about MODBUS/TCP nor industrial network protocols. Just use Ethereal while the sample Java applet is working and you will sniff the correct addresses, commands, etc. I'm not a programmer and I got a PHP Modbus/TCP class (with all documentation in French...which I don't speak) to call the device and display the correct temperature in about 5 minutes.

Also, the temperature is reported back in as a 16 bit integer (0-65535). 0 corresponds to whatever you set as the lowest limit for the thermocouple and 65535 corresponds to the highest. Everything in between is linear. Again, its like pulling teeth to get this information from the manufacturer.

Find yourself a good single board computer with an extended temperature range. Within the PC/104 and PC/104+ families it isn't hard to find SBCs with an operating temperature range of -40 to +85 C, and they're built to handle humidity. I've had good luck with Advantech devices; Diamond Systems makes SBCs with data acquisition systems built-in which might come in handy for your application.

If I was riging it up, I'd use something like RS485 into sealed units with a small custom board in a sealed unit with the sensors hanging off of that. Then you only need one or two PC's outside plugged into the networks of sensors to read off the data and log it.

You could plug pretty much any PC with a serial port in, with a converter like:
http://www.advantech.com/products/Model_Detail.asp ?model_id=1-1TWNLI

The only dificulty left is working out what kind of connectors you can use, if it's all hard wired, then it might be fine to wire the cables though sealed gromits into the boxes for termination.

The protocol could be quite trivial too, say send a couple of characters like R521,53 to say you want to read sensor 53 on unit 521, it'd run out over the bus, get picked up by the right unit, and reply a short time later with something shocking like V521,53,258 (where 258 is -15 degrees in kelvin).

But don't take my word for it, just build a low temprature version of:
http://www.elecdesign.com/Articles/Index.cfm?AD=1& ArticleID=6191

Advansys is selling Ezra-800MHz SOM (system on module) in ETX form factor (3.7 x 4.5 ") for twice EPIA prices, at this link; while their EVA SOC (system on chip) only reports 80186 performance levels, and have embedded RTOS, probably TRONso it's not what you're looking for.

I work at a printing plant (currently the number one company in the world w00t). We use advantech panel computers w/touch screen displays at the back of the press and soon in the color booth. They get abused with ink, oil, and various solvents and after a year still have NO "dead spots" on the screen where it doesnt work. Using your finger the mouse cursor does jump around a bit but i always use the back end of a pen or another plastic tool to move the mouse/icons around.

http://www.advantech.com/ACG/

I would start looking into (single board computers) SBCs or PC104 solutions. Some of the most common and easily available are made by Advantech.

I would also start checking out wearable computing sites and lists. The list to read is wear-hard.

If you want to build your own system, go to Advantech and choose "Biscuit SBCs". They have fanless, VIA-based 667mhz computers that are roughly the size of 3.5" Hard drives. The computers include almost everything you need: audio, ethernet, VGA, TV out, IRDA, USB, IDE, and CompactFlash support. The only things you need to do yourself would be finding/building a case and finding a stable 5VDC power supply.

Not to mention the VIA mini-itx boards, Shuttle spacewalker flex-atx boards, PCs that fit in a 5 1/4" bay. If I win lotto I'll make a cluster out of a backplane and a bunch of PC cards :)

I was looking at using an Advantech specialized panel PC system for a harsh environment application a while back, but I can't remember what the model number was. Anyway, here's a breakdown of its specs:

Operating Temperatures: -20C to +60C
Storage Temperatures: -40C to +75C
Relative Humidity: 99% condensing
Salt Spray Tolerance: 5% at 38C for 48 hours
Chemical Splash Tolerance: diesel fuel, oil, other automotive/machinery chemicals
Vibration Tolerance: any axis, 24-2 kHz at 8G RMS (non-shock isolated)
Shock Tolerance: 10G, fixtured
Waterproofing: sealed to ±35kPa (±5 psi) vs. water/water vapor
Electrostatic Tolerance: 15 kV discharge on any pin, air gap and conductive

Sorry to burst your bubble, PC-104 is designed for embedded systems however the data width is 16 bit much like the ISA slot in older PCs. It is designed for what it is used for, basic bus for I/O controllers, etc. If you are looking for processing power there is a whole slew of embedded PCs that have up to a P-2 266 in them now. This company Advantech
does a lot with embedded systems. They're a bit pricey, but they have great hardware.

I've done work for several dentists and they seem to all be interested in the latest and greatest (while not always excited about paying for it).

From the discussions I've had, they have all said that they would prefer something with a decent size screen that's wireless. When I showed them my PDA's browser, they all seemed to think it was too small.

I think something like this would be more useful. It has a PCI slot allowing a choice of wireless cards, etc. Also the Viewsonic listed above looks nice...

For example the PCM-9572 with a low power Celeron 500 (no fan), 8MB video mem (3D!) and up to 256MB RAM. Costs about US$ 1k together with a MicroBox chassis (MBPC-300-9572F) and the matching external 50W power supply (PS-55A).

Take a look at Advantech's PCM-5823. Small, dual ethernet, CF card, ide interface. And it's available now. Very nice.

There's also the option of SBCs (single board computers). Integrated everything in a package much smaller than the Shuttle mobo. You can go from a 486DX to Socket 370, but the Geode (200-300MHz) integrated processors are neat; low power, no noisy fans needed. Most models have PCI/ISA headers, and some even have the actual slot. This could be used for whatever soundcard you desire. A good source is Advantech

First, consider that LCDs are expensive and nonstandard, as already mentioned. TVs on the other hand, are cheap, mass-produced and rugged, even when portable. So...use a TV for the display. Of course, the bigger the TV, the more expensive it'll be...but then you can use it to watch TV too.

Then you want rugged and portable? Get a biscuit form factor PC. They're small, but they're still standard PCs (which can therefore run Linux), including all the usual connections. You can get them with TV outputs (for VGA drivers), and built in ethernet and serial connections. Check out some of them at this site.

Most don't come with a hard drive, and you'll have to "roll your own" there, too. You have a choice: buy a biscuit with an IDE connector, or buy one with another standard connection, such as Compact flash or PCMCIA. If you go with the IDE, a portable 500MB IDE isn't that expensive. I saw one for $40 (US dollars) recently.

Then of course, you have to worry about batteries/power supply. That's not as big of a problem as you might think - there are LOTS of battery manufacturers. You want long lasting? You'll have to pay for longer lasting. On the upside, the compact system shouldn't take as much power as a standard laptop would.

How rugged is the result? Well, you'd be creating the casing for everything, so that's pretty much up to you.

So, I figure these costs:
$400 CPU (with ethernet, etc...)
$400 portable Flat Screen TV (VGA video displayed)
$50 Hard Drive
$800 Batteries/Power supply (enough to last a week - a SERIOUS load, and still probably an underestimate of the price)
$80 Casing

Of course, for an extra $500, you could upgrade to having real SVGA video, but you don't need hardware acceleration of video for most applications with which this technology is normally used, so...you can't get it.

I suppose if $1730 is three times as much as you would have paid, then this is a bad deal...but since the Thinkpad X22 retails for around $3000, I think I'm talking about a better deal than a prebuilt machines. Plus this thing is actually upgradable.

Advantech carries similar "PC on a PCI" products, much of which are much more powerful (P3 1Ghz anyone?) than the one referenced in the article.

-RevRigel

I did a Google search for transparent ide mirroring, and here are some links from the first page:

• CRU IDE Mirroring -- "The MiniRAID is an IDE RAID-1 mirroring "Intermediate Adapter". Once the MiniRAID is installed, it will automatically write all the data to both the "PRIMARY" drive and the "MIRROR" drive at the same time. It is completely transparent and requires no special commands to functions. "
  
• DupliDisk II -- "DupliDisk II features include: ... fast RAID mirroring ... plug-and-play installation ... support for IDE, E-IDE and U/DMA drives ... transparent system operation"
  
• RHC-IDE-2R -- "... the RHC-IDE-2R mirrors data to two hard drives simultaneously ... [and] is Host transparent and OS independent, no device driver is required."
  
• ARAID 99-300 -- "The ARAID unit with hard drives acts as a single IDE disk. This product has the following benefits: No interface card or driver is required -- the unit simply plugs into the IDE bus chain. ... There is no special management software required"

I'm sure you could find more with a few more minutes of searching. Next time try Google before Asking Slashdot.

Here's what I'm looking at:

1. Motherboard - Advantech 5864L - video in/out, network and built in sound.
2. Riser card 2xPCI.
3. SBLive (so I can have digital audio!)
4. DVD decoder card (if you need that, I don't)

Add a small hard disk, a read-only linux image, and you are good to go. The hardest part will probably be getting the video out to work under linux. I haven't been able to find any references online. :)

They even make a small case and power supply, here, but the case is a little ugly. The power supply doesn't appear to have a fan though.

I'm using an earlier version of the board as the basis for my car-based mp3 system. Works really well. Can't say anything about the PSU, it became available after I started with my system.

Here's what I'm looking at:

1. Motherboard - Advantech 5864L - video in/out, network and built in sound.
2. Riser card 2xPCI.
3. SBLive (so I can have digital audio!)
4. DVD decoder card (if you need that, I don't)

Add a small hard disk, a read-only linux image, and you are good to go. The hardest part will probably be getting the video out to work under linux. I haven't been able to find any references online. :)

They even make a small case and power supply, here, but the case is a little ugly. The power supply doesn't appear to have a fan though.

I'm using an earlier version of the board as the basis for my car-based mp3 system. Works really well. Can't say anything about the PSU, it became available after I started with my system.

Here's what I'm looking at:

1. Motherboard - Advantech 5864L - video in/out, network and built in sound.
2. Riser card 2xPCI.
3. SBLive (so I can have digital audio!)
4. DVD decoder card (if you need that, I don't)

Add a small hard disk, a read-only linux image, and you are good to go. The hardest part will probably be getting the video out to work under linux. I haven't been able to find any references online. :)

They even make a small case and power supply, here, but the case is a little ugly. The power supply doesn't appear to have a fan though.

I'm using an earlier version of the board as the basis for my car-based mp3 system. Works really well. Can't say anything about the PSU, it became available after I started with my system.

In the past, we've used Advantech, mainly becuase they have a solid foundation (been in the industry for a while) and provide decent customer support. Their prices are a little high compared to do-it-yourself PC's, but they offer some nice embedded equipment (biscuit PC's, PC/104, wall-mount boxes...) that makes installations look good.

Hope this helps!

Advantech supplied a full line of CompactPCI chassis and system boards at very reasonable prices. They also carry PC104, and other custom SBCs.

Crystal PC supplies ISA-based computer systems in various rackmount configurations. Especially useful if you need 20 or 30 of the same box in a rack. They specialize in 1U and "toolbox" computers.

Diversified Technologies supplies PCI SBCs, cPCI SBC, and an array of chassis.

I would also like to take a minute and caution you against using *BSD (or Linux) as a firewall. While it is true that they came be designed for less, and that you have greater control, it also means you have greater responsibility to maintain these system. The advantage to a Cisco PIX is that the OS is not well know and not available for download. In the case of BSD, there are many more exploits available. Worse, you need to worry about both OS exploits and Firewall software exploits. In the case of the PIX, the OS is the firewall, and exploits are far fewer. While it may be more expensive, think of the cost to your business that a breach would cause. After you factor in the extra work, extra maintenance, and lower security, you'll find a PIX is much more cost effective.
--
He had come like a thief in the night,

Do a search for SBC or single board computer. LinuxDevices has a section on them. Also see Advantech they have a bunch of 5.25 or 3.5 form factor computers with no fans. I got a 300Mhz Geode box (x86 pent class) with ether, sound, video, KB/Mouse, Floppy, UDMA 33(LINUX SUPPORTED) and I am pretty sure that you can get them with TV out support, though I'm not sure if there are linux drivers for em. They also have a few board that support the bigger mobile pentiums, but that would most likely require a fan.

Yes this is a powerPC board, but for ~500$ you can get a 3.5 form factor x86 with dual ether, and real video. I got one for dev at work from Advantech The entire thing run off of a 5v suppy. Get a laptop hard drive (44pin IDE) and you have an entire 5v system that will take a standard power plug from your power suppy. Emjembedded also has similar stuff.

A visor has three ports really, serial, ir and springboard (do the serial and ir share? or are they seperate?)

Actually, it has Serial/USB, IR, and Springboard. The solution that would seem to make the most sense to me would be to use USB to talk to the thing, but since it's a USB device and not a host, that might be difficult. The IR sucks up CPU and probably can not be driven properly at the same time you use the Serial or USB, but of course the springboard is just on the system bus.

Regardless, I agree that the visor is completely the wrong approach to wearable computing. It's slow and has very little storage. I'd be looking for something more like the biscuit PCs from Advantech.

(I'm not convinced of the value of a parallel-port MP3 player either - why not just use the CPU and sound card? Is this a laptop market thing?)

It's a general low-CPU-power market thing. Every try to play a mp3 on a 486? Even a DX4/100 can't really cut it, especially if you're trying to do something else at the same time. A Pentium 100 running windows can just barely handle the task, and when you do anything else it stutters. This may be due to the Windows architecture, but I'd be on thin ice to speculate. Certainly on my P133 linux box I could get it to stutter without much trouble.

What's really slick is that you can take a 386 or similar, stick one of these on it, and add some sort of display - Bang, you've got a pretty good-sounding mp3 player. If you were inclined to find some sort of GPS-to-map software, you could get a 486 board from Advantech which is pretty small (90 x 96 mm.) Stack their PC-104 GPS Module on top of it, add a 6" TFT Daylight Viewable LCD (From Sharp, perhaps) to it, and stick it in your car. The entire package would be very small, very low power, and with the addition of the lp3, could play mp3s as a background task, fueled by the operating system of your choice, since it's a standard (more or less) x86-based PC. I'd guess the total cost of such a thing would be about $1100 in parts, counting the SBC, GPS, LCD, and the Cabling kit. It runs off +5 volts, so it should be trivial to regulate down the power from your car and get nice clean power out of it. You'd also need, of course, either a CompactFlash card or a laptop drive for storage. Make that $1200. Still not bad for a complete solution with a display.

Can you tell I've put a lot of thought into this? :)

(I'm not convinced of the value of a parallel-port MP3 player either - why not just use the CPU and sound card? Is this a laptop market thing?)

It's a general low-CPU-power market thing. Every try to play a mp3 on a 486? Even a DX4/100 can't really cut it, especially if you're trying to do something else at the same time. A Pentium 100 running windows can just barely handle the task, and when you do anything else it stutters. This may be due to the Windows architecture, but I'd be on thin ice to speculate. Certainly on my P133 linux box I could get it to stutter without much trouble.

What's really slick is that you can take a 386 or similar, stick one of these on it, and add some sort of display - Bang, you've got a pretty good-sounding mp3 player. If you were inclined to find some sort of GPS-to-map software, you could get a 486 board from Advantech which is pretty small (90 x 96 mm.) Stack their PC-104 GPS Module on top of it, add a 6" TFT Daylight Viewable LCD (From Sharp, perhaps) to it, and stick it in your car. The entire package would be very small, very low power, and with the addition of the lp3, could play mp3s as a background task, fueled by the operating system of your choice, since it's a standard (more or less) x86-based PC. I'd guess the total cost of such a thing would be about $1100 in parts, counting the SBC, GPS, LCD, and the Cabling kit. It runs off +5 volts, so it should be trivial to regulate down the power from your car and get nice clean power out of it. You'd also need, of course, either a CompactFlash card or a laptop drive for storage. Make that $1200. Still not bad for a complete solution with a display.

Can you tell I've put a lot of thought into this? :)

My personal favorite for embedded computers is Advantech. For instance, the PCM-5820 is a 3.5" SBC (It takes up about as much X and Z space (laid flat) as a floppy drive, and it's about half as thick.) I know, Cyrix sucks, but it is a fairly low power pentium-class chip. A cabling kit will cost you another $100 or so, and it has ethernet and (AC97) audio.

If you want to move up into the big time, then they also have SBCs which are 5.25", IE, same X and Z space as a CDROM or something. It goes all the way up to the PCM-9574 which takes a socket 370 Pentium III, and as it says, "The PCM-9574 is an all-in-one Pentium® III processor single board computer (SBC) with a 2x AGP LCD controller, Audio interface, PCI Fast Ethernet interface and one PCI expansion slot." Using a right-angle PCI riser card, you can add one or two PCI half-length cards sitting just above the motherboard and taking up a very economical amount of space.

By the way, competing in about the same market as the machine this article is about, Their CPC-2245/N is the same size as a 2.5" hard drive. I don't know what advantech's fetish is with making PCs the size of storage devices, but I guess that's not real important.

My personal favorite for embedded computers is Advantech. For instance, the PCM-5820 is a 3.5" SBC (It takes up about as much X and Z space (laid flat) as a floppy drive, and it's about half as thick.) I know, Cyrix sucks, but it is a fairly low power pentium-class chip. A cabling kit will cost you another $100 or so, and it has ethernet and (AC97) audio.

If you want to move up into the big time, then they also have SBCs which are 5.25", IE, same X and Z space as a CDROM or something. It goes all the way up to the PCM-9574 which takes a socket 370 Pentium III, and as it says, "The PCM-9574 is an all-in-one Pentium® III processor single board computer (SBC) with a 2x AGP LCD controller, Audio interface, PCI Fast Ethernet interface and one PCI expansion slot." Using a right-angle PCI riser card, you can add one or two PCI half-length cards sitting just above the motherboard and taking up a very economical amount of space.

By the way, competing in about the same market as the machine this article is about, Their CPC-2245/N is the same size as a 2.5" hard drive. I don't know what advantech's fetish is with making PCs the size of storage devices, but I guess that's not real important.

My personal favorite for embedded computers is Advantech. For instance, the PCM-5820 is a 3.5" SBC (It takes up about as much X and Z space (laid flat) as a floppy drive, and it's about half as thick.) I know, Cyrix sucks, but it is a fairly low power pentium-class chip. A cabling kit will cost you another $100 or so, and it has ethernet and (AC97) audio.

If you want to move up into the big time, then they also have SBCs which are 5.25", IE, same X and Z space as a CDROM or something. It goes all the way up to the PCM-9574 which takes a socket 370 Pentium III, and as it says, "The PCM-9574 is an all-in-one Pentium® III processor single board computer (SBC) with a 2x AGP LCD controller, Audio interface, PCI Fast Ethernet interface and one PCI expansion slot." Using a right-angle PCI riser card, you can add one or two PCI half-length cards sitting just above the motherboard and taking up a very economical amount of space.

By the way, competing in about the same market as the machine this article is about, Their CPC-2245/N is the same size as a 2.5" hard drive. I don't know what advantech's fetish is with making PCs the size of storage devices, but I guess that's not real important.

My personal favorite for embedded computers is Advantech. For instance, the PCM-5820 is a 3.5" SBC (It takes up about as much X and Z space (laid flat) as a floppy drive, and it's about half as thick.) I know, Cyrix sucks, but it is a fairly low power pentium-class chip. A cabling kit will cost you another $100 or so, and it has ethernet and (AC97) audio.

If you want to move up into the big time, then they also have SBCs which are 5.25", IE, same X and Z space as a CDROM or something. It goes all the way up to the PCM-9574 which takes a socket 370 Pentium III, and as it says, "The PCM-9574 is an all-in-one Pentium® III processor single board computer (SBC) with a 2x AGP LCD controller, Audio interface, PCI Fast Ethernet interface and one PCI expansion slot." Using a right-angle PCI riser card, you can add one or two PCI half-length cards sitting just above the motherboard and taking up a very economical amount of space.

By the way, competing in about the same market as the machine this article is about, Their CPC-2245/N is the same size as a 2.5" hard drive. I don't know what advantech's fetish is with making PCs the size of storage devices, but I guess that's not real important.

Penguin Computing will sell you a 1U rackmount PC, ATX, with an all-in-one motherboard for $1600. Yeah, that's a big pile of change, but it's a pretty complete system. Add a NIC (or a dual or quad-port NIC) to the one supplied PCI slot, and you're off and running.

If you want something that takes very little space, then you should check out Advantech's Biscuit PC boards. For instance, there's the "PCM-9570/S" which is a "Socket 370 CeleronTM/Pentium® III Processor SBC with AGP, VGA/LCD, Ethernet and SCSI". That's probably pretty pricy, and it only has one ethernet interface, but it does have a PCI slot. On a somewhat cheaper note, there's the "PCM-5862E/L" (Pentium® Processor with MMX Technology SBC with Audio, VGA/LCD and 100Base-T Ethernet) which also has a PCI slot. Get a one-slot PCI riser card, so you can angle the PCI card over the board, slap a 180MMX or something on it (They're cheap) and a couple 16mb EDO SIMMs, and you're in buisness.

The downside to building a biscuit PC is that you need a cable connection kit (About $100), a box to put it in (It can be hard to find one that looks nice), and a power supply. The advantech boards are nice in that you can get away with supplying them only VCC and ground (+5 and 0 volts) and bang, you're done. Add a laptop IDE drive, and you're in the biz.

Penguin Computing will sell you a 1U rackmount PC, ATX, with an all-in-one motherboard for $1600. Yeah, that's a big pile of change, but it's a pretty complete system. Add a NIC (or a dual or quad-port NIC) to the one supplied PCI slot, and you're off and running.

If you want something that takes very little space, then you should check out Advantech's Biscuit PC boards. For instance, there's the "PCM-9570/S" which is a "Socket 370 CeleronTM/Pentium® III Processor SBC with AGP, VGA/LCD, Ethernet and SCSI". That's probably pretty pricy, and it only has one ethernet interface, but it does have a PCI slot. On a somewhat cheaper note, there's the "PCM-5862E/L" (Pentium® Processor with MMX Technology SBC with Audio, VGA/LCD and 100Base-T Ethernet) which also has a PCI slot. Get a one-slot PCI riser card, so you can angle the PCI card over the board, slap a 180MMX or something on it (They're cheap) and a couple 16mb EDO SIMMs, and you're in buisness.

The downside to building a biscuit PC is that you need a cable connection kit (About $100), a box to put it in (It can be hard to find one that looks nice), and a power supply. The advantech boards are nice in that you can get away with supplying them only VCC and ground (+5 and 0 volts) and bang, you're done. Add a laptop IDE drive, and you're in the biz.

Penguin Computing will sell you a 1U rackmount PC, ATX, with an all-in-one motherboard for $1600. Yeah, that's a big pile of change, but it's a pretty complete system. Add a NIC (or a dual or quad-port NIC) to the one supplied PCI slot, and you're off and running.

If you want something that takes very little space, then you should check out Advantech's Biscuit PC boards. For instance, there's the "PCM-9570/S" which is a "Socket 370 CeleronTM/Pentium® III Processor SBC with AGP, VGA/LCD, Ethernet and SCSI". That's probably pretty pricy, and it only has one ethernet interface, but it does have a PCI slot. On a somewhat cheaper note, there's the "PCM-5862E/L" (Pentium® Processor with MMX Technology SBC with Audio, VGA/LCD and 100Base-T Ethernet) which also has a PCI slot. Get a one-slot PCI riser card, so you can angle the PCI card over the board, slap a 180MMX or something on it (They're cheap) and a couple 16mb EDO SIMMs, and you're in buisness.

The downside to building a biscuit PC is that you need a cable connection kit (About $100), a box to put it in (It can be hard to find one that looks nice), and a power supply. The advantech boards are nice in that you can get away with supplying them only VCC and ground (+5 and 0 volts) and bang, you're done. Add a laptop IDE drive, and you're in the biz.

Eval kits and other cheap devices have always been my savior. Not the $3K ones that some companies dish out (ick), but in the $100-300 vein.

The uCsimm has already been mentioned, and that is based on the Dragonball (MC68EZ328) just like the Palm. You can get an ARM evaluation board that has a 25MHz ARM implementation from Sharp (LH77790B) for about $150. The URL.

Both of these have all sorts of logic already on board, such as serial ports, LCD controllers, timers, yada yada. The uCsimm runs uClinux (again, as mentioned before), and the ARM eval. board can run eCos, a product of Cygnus^H^H^H^H^H^H Red Hat. Both CPUs are supported by gcc, so no having to deal with weird third-party compilers. eCos is a little rough around the edges, but it might be sufficient for what you need.

Advantech has a fair selection of x86 hardware of all different shapes, sizes, colors, textures, and flavors. Their use in portable applications is questionable at best... (Where did Transmeta go?!?)

There is also the LART, which is a StrongARM-based board, but they aren't sold pre-assembled, so it is a DIY job. And unless you have the facilities to do boards with surface-mount components, it would be rather difficult to accomplish solo. I would have one were it not for that one wrinkle.

You can do web searches on things like "embedded processor", "microcontroller", "digital signal processor" and find other eval kits (maybe even reasonably-priced ones!). There are plenty out there.

A nice beige case just doesn't blend in with the rest of my system very well. I'd rather buy a "network audio appliance" from Sony or Pioneer or something though. Heh, Sony should make a slick looking, hackable Linux box with SPDIF and TOSLINK outputs and a big VFD on the front. And maybe hardware DVD decoding and an S-Video output too. Oh well, enough dreaming. You'd probably get a lot of wierd looks, but it'd be really cool to hack a SB Live into a Cobalt RaQ 3i. Anyone have any suggestions on doing that? Hmm. Or maybe I'll cut up a Sony receiver or DVD player or something and stick an Advantech single board computer in there. Or maybe I'll get back to work before my boss notices me daydreaming. :)

This is super cool as well, although way more expensive than the i-opener:

http://adirect.advantech .com/asp/systemsel.asp?Catalog=PPC

Advantech sells a lot of stuff like this that have tons of hack value. =)

This is super cool as well, although way more expensive than the i-opener:

http://adirect.advantech .com/asp/systemsel.asp?Catalog=PPC

Advantech sells a lot of stuff like this that have tons of hack value. =)

Actually, to continue the off-topicness, I was thinking about microbeowulf rigs not too long ago. Consider Advantech's PCM-5820. I know, it's a Cyrix chip, but you can get a whole board with everything on it, including video (not that you need video) and Ethernet, and it's teensy. "(145 x 102 mm) fits in the space of a 3 1/2" HDD"

So you take a generic rackmount box, and then you rig up a cabling solution to put these suckers on a cardedge with the ground pin a little longer (Hotswap, baby) and isolate noisy signals with grounds in between them and everything else. Ground those grounds on ONE END. Voila! You should be able to fit at least twelve of these in a 4U rackmount case, along with a power supply. You can netboot them, or use 2.5" or 3.5" IDE disks.

Just don't forget to put a BIG-ASS-FAN in there. These babies probably cost $500/each before ram (I know the Socket 7 version of this thing is $400 with no chip) and it would be a shame to crispy fry them.

Check out Advantech's biscuit PC's. They've got one that takes a socket 7 CPU and has on-board ethernet, sound, IDE, video, everything. It runs somewhere around 600 bucks, but it's a 5.25" form factor and runs off a standard hard-drive power connector (only needs +5 and +12 volts). It's what I was gonna use in my project, but that's more than I wanna spend... BTW, on that page, I'm including most of the plans to do something like this. I haven't gotten it done yet, but hopefully I will this weekend...

Mike
--