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One of the potential systems I've submitted was an appliance meant for use in aircraft. I found some automotive ones as well. I have no idea how much any of those costs, every supplier I found wanted full company info for a quote, it makes it difficult to shop around.

Alternately pre-built full systems tend to at least sometimes have a price-tag next to them. Systems like are off the shelf and akin to what I want but out of spec. I'm trying to shop a little before settling on a supplier. Unfortunately Intel systems come packaged like the link, ARM seems to be bare boards.

A crawlspace might actually be more pleasant: there will be moisture and dust; but the outside environment doesn't have any substantial sources of the 'tar' stuff in cigarette smoke buildup that is so brutally good at turning mere dust and fuzz into a sticky mess that you really want to break out the solvents to deal with.

The outdoors certainly isn't ideal(in particular, condensation inside HDDs will kill them right quick, should it happen; but on a concrete slab under a house it'll be mostly whatever dirt/dust is light enough to stay airborne, plus condensation at certain times of day.

If I were in the questioner's shoes, I'd do it one of two(maybe three) ways:

Option 1: Get out the checkbook and call an industrial vendor. I'm most familiar with Logic Supply; but there are others, no specific endorsement, etc. They have, and will be happy to sell, hardware fast enough to do HTPC stuff(not really a very high bar to clear, even Intel Integrated graphics does H.264 decode in hardware, so it's just not very hard); and it's all sealed, fanless, classy.

Option 2: Option 1; but DIY: pick low-power parts, a big aluminum chassis with a nice chunky amplifier heatsink attached, thermal paste everything you can to the chassis, hope for the best. Cheaper, not as good; unless you put some real time and craftsmanship into it; but cheap is cheap, no?

Option 3: Expendable: Circuit boards can take a bit of exposure to dust and water, heatsinks and fans can handle some clogging if you over-spec the cooling a bit, cheap hardware is good enough for HTPC use so if you need to replace some it isn't a huge catastrophe:

Just for your sake(the computer won't much care) go for an aluminum case and brass or nylon standoffs, screws, etc. cheap stamped steel can and will rust, and cutting yourself on rusty metal is no fun. Choose a heat sink with widely spaced fins(big fibers will still get caught, smaller ones and dust will pass through). Over-spec the cooling a bit, to allow for degradation: big, slow fans are best. Condensation? Try to keep important boards vertical so that it doesn't pool anywhere. Yeah, it'll die; but based on the systems I've seen living through all sorts of hell, odds are good that it will take a while.

(The only exception, and the real problem if he wants to put his storage array outside, is that HDDs are touchy enough under controlled conditions, a pain in the ass to swap out, especially if you have to grovel into the crawl space, and are unlikely to like moisture. A little boot SSD for your HTPC to run from and access network storage? Sure. Your big RAID array? Outside? Are you Joking? That will hurt.)

One option you may try is utilizing an Intel NUC computer in an industrial fanless chassis (something similar to this: http://www.logicsupply.com/com...). The NUC should be fine for a HTPC and the chassis is designed for usage in harsh environments.

You can get in-system UPSes for desktops; but they tend to be specialty items (Logic Supply is the one I know of, no relation to them, just the example I could find most easily. Fits in a 2.5in bay, takes standard size Li-ion cells, pretty cute); For anything remotely affordable, the answer seems to be "Buy a laptop". Despite the increasingly overlap between laptops and desktops in the low power and 'all-in-one' segments, I don't know of anything (not sold as a laptop) that offers a fully 'laptop-style' power system, with the option of a nicely integrated battery. Not quite sure why.

A "Full Computer" isn't what it used to be. We like this kind of thing.

here you go

You have to support legacy 9x systems? Ouch.

Here's a few other tidbits to help then. :D

Your legacy systems are highly unlikely to have healthy IDE HDDS after this long in service, and getting replacements is not likely to be possible in another 5 years.

If you use this "preboot ramdisk" method, you can use a poor man's SSD, like a CF->IDE adaptor. the limited speed (often painfully slow. My CF adaptor is limited to PIO4 tranfers! Gerk!) And limited writelife of this super bargain basement solution are mostly overcome by the read once, write never nature of this setup. The adaptors themselves are cheap. If you don't want to dish out the $$ for CF modules, you actually *can* chain an SDHC->CF adaptor to the IDE interface, and use dirt cheap SD cards. (These solutions are very popular with embedded systems where rugged and cheap are both required. Tradeoff is speed. Boot up time will be painful, but once up, will be a speed demon.)

That would let your industrial install 9x systems live for a *very* long time, and would put a lot less wear on the system's PSU.

Since you are booting them via syslinux, you can have a great many fully configured disk images stored on the media. A commodity 32gb SDCard could hold 64 fully configured image configurations, and present a list on bootup! (Even more if you use win95B, or win98 first edition, which can live in 256mb and 384mb images, respectively. Tested!)

For ease of maintenance, I strongly suggest a uniform workstation hardware base, so that you can use one system as the testbed, build images from it, and deploy them everywhere else. Possbly use a startup script to change the network IDs to avoid collisions on the fly.

Ideally, once all set up, this is a "set and forget" solution. However, the tradeoff is in prepping suitable images, which isn't a trivial exercise.

http://www.logicsupply.com/categories/touchscreen_displays

They might be more expensive than you're looking for, but they have a nice selection.

Intel makes some decent, and damn cheap, atom boards(This model is among the cheapest). Unfortunately, those are a bit on the large side: normal ATX and P4 power connectors, and a full PCI slot are nice for compatibility; but they strongly suggest that the board hasn't been tightened up nearly as much as it could be. For whatever reason, Intel has left the yet-smaller niches to VIA, who still manage to charge north of $200 for their ultracompact x86 boards, despite tepid performance. I'm not quite sure why Intel hasn't spun an Atom board of the same size and priced it $50 lower; but they don't seem to have done so.

Then there are the good, old fashioned, PC/104 boards. They tend not to be the cheapest, and a fair amount of the I/O might be on oddball headers; but they are available in a fair assortment of x86 flavors...

My first thought was that this is a NanoITX board for i3/i5... turns out NanoITX is actually a smaller form factor (less surface area).

This does not compete with RPi at all. It's significantly larger, and will be significantly more expensive. Considering that the CPU alone will cost *at least* $100 (current prices for cheapest Socket G1 I can find is actually $160 and that's not even an i3), it's not going to be hitting the $100 price tag that TFS suggests either.

(reference needed: http://www.logicsupply.com/categories/processors )

You can already get an Atom-powered mini-ITX for only 70$USD.

The crazy thing is that you could probably fit two of these new NUC boards into the case of an old C64, along with a power supply and a hard drive.

Jetway offers this one. Not nearly as cheap as a vanilla Atom board with its single PCI slot stuffed full of storage controller; but it isn't a crowded field...

It's one of these:
http://www.logicsupply.com/products/epn_41els_02

The system in question is a Mini ITX system, and the processor is a P8400, mobile penryn-based Core2 Duo. When I turn the system on, the fan spins up to about 5000-7000 RPM, and sounds a bit like a jet engine taking off, but once the system is booted it spins down to about 200-300rpm, is still slow enough under load that I can't hear it when I'm watching full-screen video. You can hear it when it's idle, but not from more than 2-3 feet away. Since that system is on 24/7 and rarely rebooted (it's an HTPC, but it's also my network fileserver), and is bolted to the back of a 42" TV, that really isn't a problem.

Having a small fan doesn't need to be a hinderance.... I have a mini ITX-based HTPC system with a 1.5" fan on the CPU, and it's still damned near silent, even when watching h.264 full screen 1080p video. If you have sufficient air flow around the CPU, then you don't need the CPU fan to move much air specifically over the CPU. Put it in a case like this one, and minimize the number of moving parts (in my case, no moving parts aside from the CPU fan), and you can do quite nicely with a small fan keeping the CPU cool and still being quiet.

If you have the option, use Intel wireless. The last time I had to install drivers for my Intel wifi cards was years ago, and I have not had any problems using wifi with Intel cards on Linux ever (once the drivers were installed). No slowdowns, no sudden drops from the network, no stability issues at all. And in most laptops, it is really easy to specify an Intel wireless card... if they didn't give you a choice at the manufacturer, it's also trivially easy to replace the card with one you can get from sites like http://www.logicsupply.com/. The Intel cards tend to be more expensive, but they are worth every penny, especially if you plan on installing Linux.

And to get rid of those unsightly stutters, free up a slot and install a dedicated co-processor.

http://www.logicsupply.com/blog/2009/11/16/the-little-pcie-card-that-could/

Supported by XBMC under Windows, Linux and OS X. Cost $49 at that site, under "accessories, adapters". I just ordered one and will put it thru its paces on my Asus EEE 901 soon.

a large number of boards these days have on board 19V or 12V DC barrel plugs on them. There is also always the option of buying one of the many cases around that just use a pico PSU http://www.logicsupply.com/products/picopsu_90 and this case http://www.logicsupply.com/products/5677 has a small round cutout that you could use to replace the internal PSU with any dc-dc board you liked. http://mini-itx.com/store/?c=2#p4027 motherboard for example draws ~6 watts, and when used with something like a CF-IDE adapter, it might draw 10-15 watts. It's a lot more expensive than an router though. even a SOHO ones. A lot more flexible though.

It's not like you are trying to build a gaming system in a small case and even then most gaming machines don't pull much over 500W at max load.

a large number of boards these days have on board 19V or 12V DC barrel plugs on them. There is also always the option of buying one of the many cases around that just use a pico PSU http://www.logicsupply.com/products/picopsu_90 and this case http://www.logicsupply.com/products/5677 has a small round cutout that you could use to replace the internal PSU with any dc-dc board you liked. http://mini-itx.com/store/?c=2#p4027 motherboard for example draws ~6 watts, and when used with something like a CF-IDE adapter, it might draw 10-15 watts. It's a lot more expensive than an router though. even a SOHO ones. A lot more flexible though.

It's not like you are trying to build a gaming system in a small case and even then most gaming machines don't pull much over 500W at max load.

I haven't used pfSense, but have used m0n0 for quire a while. If you're concerned about your old hardware crapping out (or don't have any lying around), you should be able to put your own box together for under $200 easily that will have far more horsepower than anything you can buy for even close to that price. You can easily use a CF card for booting and pick a fanless board. You can avoid all moving parts and hopefully up the reliability quite a bit.
If rolling your own box is beyond your skills or time, in additioning to putting my own box together I've also gotten two units from these guys:
http://www.logicsupply.com/categories/firewall_systems
in rackmountable units, but they also make smaller ones (10"x2"x7"). They also have boxes running untangle (which I haven't used myself either).

Check out Intel D945GSEJT Johnstown Mainboard Dual core Atom, low power fanless, doesn't need power supply (jack in back goes right to power brick) and gig ethernet for about $118. Very low profile Mini-ITX board, works well in $39 mini-case. I've been using this combination for all sorts of things esp storage servers ( Try OpenFiler Linux-based or FreeNAS BSD-based FOSS NAS solutions )

Check out Intel D945GSEJT Johnstown Mainboard Dual core Atom, low power fanless, doesn't need power supply (jack in back goes right to power brick) and gig ethernet for about $118. Very low profile Mini-ITX board, works well in $39 mini-case. I've been using this combination for all sorts of things esp storage servers ( Try OpenFiler Linux-based or FreeNAS BSD-based FOSS NAS solutions )

www.logicsupply.com

*shrugs* I have karma to burn...

I bought almost everything from Logic Supply. I found the staff there was very helpful in answering my questions, and made suggestions for issues that I might run into, and how to engineer around it.

Specific links to the hardware I chose are:
The Case - Morex model 5689, with 80W A/C brick
The Motherboard - MSI IM-GM45
The Processor - Intel P8400
The WLAN - Intel 5100 802.11a/b/g/n, with 4" 2.4/5.8GHz pigtail antenna

and insert hard drive/memory of your choice. I went with 4GB of generic SO-DIMM DDR2 memory (that, about a month later, got swapped into my laptop, with the laptop's 2GB put into the HTPC, still plenty for Windows Vista x32 Ultimate... I do love MSDN... :P)

I had to drill a hole in the case to mount the pigtail antenna, but other than that, I didn't have to modify anything in the case. It's surprisingly easy to work with, actually... first computer build I had fun with in a long time.

As far as the TV tuner, insert tuner of your choice. I went with a rebranded ATi TV Wonder 650HD, made by Diamond Multimedia, because it came with a media center remote control... I later bought a Pinnacle USB remote control because it came with an IR blaster for controlling my set-top box. The Diamond remote also has very small buttons that are mashed together, and I was finding it very difficult to hit the right button in the dark... the Pinnacle remote control has fewer buttons, they have different shapes, and the remote is more ergonomically comfortable... it's not quite as good as the old Microsoft Windows XP remote, but it's still better than anything else I've tried.

For the optical drive, I'm using a USB Blu-Ray drive made by LG that I picked up from the Dell website back in January, and couldn't tell you the model number. It's main selling feature, aside from being USB, is that it's not a burner, so it only cost me $100. Not bad for a blu-ray drive ^_^. If you're planning on running Linux, you wouldn't need to worry about that, and can pick up a USB DVD drive anywhere. I'm connecting to the display via HDMI cable (with audio as well), but the motherboard has DVI and VGA display as well. AFAIK, Linux doesn't properly support HDMI (and that, along with Blu-Ray support was the main reason I went with Vista on it), but if you're planning on using VGA or DVI, you shouldn't have that problem.

About the only weird part that I had to MacGyver was an adapter plate... my TV has VESA 600x400mm mounts, and the mounting plate for the case has VESA 100x100mm holes. That, I actually found at Best Buy, of all places... I'm in Canada, but you can find the plate I used on both the US and Canadian sites by product name... I went with Best Buy because they had the best price on that kind of thing.

The VESA adapter plate. It comes in a kit with two, but you only need one of them... if you were near here, I'd give you the one I have left over, when you need it. That screws directly to the TV's mounting holes, and the mounting plate for the case connects to the VESA 100x100 holes that the adapter has. (the adapter also has 200x200 holes, if you go with a different case)

Finding screws that were short enough to use while keeping the heads and ends flush (so as to not scratch the TV's case, and so that the computer can actually sit on the mounting plate in the first place) was a bit of a chore... there, I'm afraid I can't help. I went to a local store called Ottawa Fastener Supply where I was able to find the M6 screws that my TV's VESA mount wanted, as well as the 4mm long pan head screws and appropriate nuts to fasten the computer's m

*shrugs* I have karma to burn...

I bought almost everything from Logic Supply. I found the staff there was very helpful in answering my questions, and made suggestions for issues that I might run into, and how to engineer around it.

Specific links to the hardware I chose are:
The Case - Morex model 5689, with 80W A/C brick
The Motherboard - MSI IM-GM45
The Processor - Intel P8400
The WLAN - Intel 5100 802.11a/b/g/n, with 4" 2.4/5.8GHz pigtail antenna

and insert hard drive/memory of your choice. I went with 4GB of generic SO-DIMM DDR2 memory (that, about a month later, got swapped into my laptop, with the laptop's 2GB put into the HTPC, still plenty for Windows Vista x32 Ultimate... I do love MSDN... :P)

I had to drill a hole in the case to mount the pigtail antenna, but other than that, I didn't have to modify anything in the case. It's surprisingly easy to work with, actually... first computer build I had fun with in a long time.

As far as the TV tuner, insert tuner of your choice. I went with a rebranded ATi TV Wonder 650HD, made by Diamond Multimedia, because it came with a media center remote control... I later bought a Pinnacle USB remote control because it came with an IR blaster for controlling my set-top box. The Diamond remote also has very small buttons that are mashed together, and I was finding it very difficult to hit the right button in the dark... the Pinnacle remote control has fewer buttons, they have different shapes, and the remote is more ergonomically comfortable... it's not quite as good as the old Microsoft Windows XP remote, but it's still better than anything else I've tried.

For the optical drive, I'm using a USB Blu-Ray drive made by LG that I picked up from the Dell website back in January, and couldn't tell you the model number. It's main selling feature, aside from being USB, is that it's not a burner, so it only cost me $100. Not bad for a blu-ray drive ^_^. If you're planning on running Linux, you wouldn't need to worry about that, and can pick up a USB DVD drive anywhere. I'm connecting to the display via HDMI cable (with audio as well), but the motherboard has DVI and VGA display as well. AFAIK, Linux doesn't properly support HDMI (and that, along with Blu-Ray support was the main reason I went with Vista on it), but if you're planning on using VGA or DVI, you shouldn't have that problem.

About the only weird part that I had to MacGyver was an adapter plate... my TV has VESA 600x400mm mounts, and the mounting plate for the case has VESA 100x100mm holes. That, I actually found at Best Buy, of all places... I'm in Canada, but you can find the plate I used on both the US and Canadian sites by product name... I went with Best Buy because they had the best price on that kind of thing.

The VESA adapter plate. It comes in a kit with two, but you only need one of them... if you were near here, I'd give you the one I have left over, when you need it. That screws directly to the TV's mounting holes, and the mounting plate for the case connects to the VESA 100x100 holes that the adapter has. (the adapter also has 200x200 holes, if you go with a different case)

Finding screws that were short enough to use while keeping the heads and ends flush (so as to not scratch the TV's case, and so that the computer can actually sit on the mounting plate in the first place) was a bit of a chore... there, I'm afraid I can't help. I went to a local store called Ottawa Fastener Supply where I was able to find the M6 screws that my TV's VESA mount wanted, as well as the 4mm long pan head screws and appropriate nuts to fasten the computer's m

*shrugs* I have karma to burn...

I bought almost everything from Logic Supply. I found the staff there was very helpful in answering my questions, and made suggestions for issues that I might run into, and how to engineer around it.

Specific links to the hardware I chose are:
The Case - Morex model 5689, with 80W A/C brick
The Motherboard - MSI IM-GM45
The Processor - Intel P8400
The WLAN - Intel 5100 802.11a/b/g/n, with 4" 2.4/5.8GHz pigtail antenna

and insert hard drive/memory of your choice. I went with 4GB of generic SO-DIMM DDR2 memory (that, about a month later, got swapped into my laptop, with the laptop's 2GB put into the HTPC, still plenty for Windows Vista x32 Ultimate... I do love MSDN... :P)

I had to drill a hole in the case to mount the pigtail antenna, but other than that, I didn't have to modify anything in the case. It's surprisingly easy to work with, actually... first computer build I had fun with in a long time.

As far as the TV tuner, insert tuner of your choice. I went with a rebranded ATi TV Wonder 650HD, made by Diamond Multimedia, because it came with a media center remote control... I later bought a Pinnacle USB remote control because it came with an IR blaster for controlling my set-top box. The Diamond remote also has very small buttons that are mashed together, and I was finding it very difficult to hit the right button in the dark... the Pinnacle remote control has fewer buttons, they have different shapes, and the remote is more ergonomically comfortable... it's not quite as good as the old Microsoft Windows XP remote, but it's still better than anything else I've tried.

For the optical drive, I'm using a USB Blu-Ray drive made by LG that I picked up from the Dell website back in January, and couldn't tell you the model number. It's main selling feature, aside from being USB, is that it's not a burner, so it only cost me $100. Not bad for a blu-ray drive ^_^. If you're planning on running Linux, you wouldn't need to worry about that, and can pick up a USB DVD drive anywhere. I'm connecting to the display via HDMI cable (with audio as well), but the motherboard has DVI and VGA display as well. AFAIK, Linux doesn't properly support HDMI (and that, along with Blu-Ray support was the main reason I went with Vista on it), but if you're planning on using VGA or DVI, you shouldn't have that problem.

About the only weird part that I had to MacGyver was an adapter plate... my TV has VESA 600x400mm mounts, and the mounting plate for the case has VESA 100x100mm holes. That, I actually found at Best Buy, of all places... I'm in Canada, but you can find the plate I used on both the US and Canadian sites by product name... I went with Best Buy because they had the best price on that kind of thing.

The VESA adapter plate. It comes in a kit with two, but you only need one of them... if you were near here, I'd give you the one I have left over, when you need it. That screws directly to the TV's mounting holes, and the mounting plate for the case connects to the VESA 100x100 holes that the adapter has. (the adapter also has 200x200 holes, if you go with a different case)

Finding screws that were short enough to use while keeping the heads and ends flush (so as to not scratch the TV's case, and so that the computer can actually sit on the mounting plate in the first place) was a bit of a chore... there, I'm afraid I can't help. I went to a local store called Ottawa Fastener Supply where I was able to find the M6 screws that my TV's VESA mount wanted, as well as the 4mm long pan head screws and appropriate nuts to fasten the computer's m

*shrugs* I have karma to burn...

I bought almost everything from Logic Supply. I found the staff there was very helpful in answering my questions, and made suggestions for issues that I might run into, and how to engineer around it.

Specific links to the hardware I chose are:
The Case - Morex model 5689, with 80W A/C brick
The Motherboard - MSI IM-GM45
The Processor - Intel P8400
The WLAN - Intel 5100 802.11a/b/g/n, with 4" 2.4/5.8GHz pigtail antenna

and insert hard drive/memory of your choice. I went with 4GB of generic SO-DIMM DDR2 memory (that, about a month later, got swapped into my laptop, with the laptop's 2GB put into the HTPC, still plenty for Windows Vista x32 Ultimate... I do love MSDN... :P)

I had to drill a hole in the case to mount the pigtail antenna, but other than that, I didn't have to modify anything in the case. It's surprisingly easy to work with, actually... first computer build I had fun with in a long time.

As far as the TV tuner, insert tuner of your choice. I went with a rebranded ATi TV Wonder 650HD, made by Diamond Multimedia, because it came with a media center remote control... I later bought a Pinnacle USB remote control because it came with an IR blaster for controlling my set-top box. The Diamond remote also has very small buttons that are mashed together, and I was finding it very difficult to hit the right button in the dark... the Pinnacle remote control has fewer buttons, they have different shapes, and the remote is more ergonomically comfortable... it's not quite as good as the old Microsoft Windows XP remote, but it's still better than anything else I've tried.

For the optical drive, I'm using a USB Blu-Ray drive made by LG that I picked up from the Dell website back in January, and couldn't tell you the model number. It's main selling feature, aside from being USB, is that it's not a burner, so it only cost me $100. Not bad for a blu-ray drive ^_^. If you're planning on running Linux, you wouldn't need to worry about that, and can pick up a USB DVD drive anywhere. I'm connecting to the display via HDMI cable (with audio as well), but the motherboard has DVI and VGA display as well. AFAIK, Linux doesn't properly support HDMI (and that, along with Blu-Ray support was the main reason I went with Vista on it), but if you're planning on using VGA or DVI, you shouldn't have that problem.

About the only weird part that I had to MacGyver was an adapter plate... my TV has VESA 600x400mm mounts, and the mounting plate for the case has VESA 100x100mm holes. That, I actually found at Best Buy, of all places... I'm in Canada, but you can find the plate I used on both the US and Canadian sites by product name... I went with Best Buy because they had the best price on that kind of thing.

The VESA adapter plate. It comes in a kit with two, but you only need one of them... if you were near here, I'd give you the one I have left over, when you need it. That screws directly to the TV's mounting holes, and the mounting plate for the case connects to the VESA 100x100 holes that the adapter has. (the adapter also has 200x200 holes, if you go with a different case)

Finding screws that were short enough to use while keeping the heads and ends flush (so as to not scratch the TV's case, and so that the computer can actually sit on the mounting plate in the first place) was a bit of a chore... there, I'm afraid I can't help. I went to a local store called Ottawa Fastener Supply where I was able to find the M6 screws that my TV's VESA mount wanted, as well as the 4mm long pan head screws and appropriate nuts to fasten the computer's m

*shrugs* I have karma to burn...

I bought almost everything from Logic Supply. I found the staff there was very helpful in answering my questions, and made suggestions for issues that I might run into, and how to engineer around it.

Specific links to the hardware I chose are:
The Case - Morex model 5689, with 80W A/C brick
The Motherboard - MSI IM-GM45
The Processor - Intel P8400
The WLAN - Intel 5100 802.11a/b/g/n, with 4" 2.4/5.8GHz pigtail antenna

and insert hard drive/memory of your choice. I went with 4GB of generic SO-DIMM DDR2 memory (that, about a month later, got swapped into my laptop, with the laptop's 2GB put into the HTPC, still plenty for Windows Vista x32 Ultimate... I do love MSDN... :P)

I had to drill a hole in the case to mount the pigtail antenna, but other than that, I didn't have to modify anything in the case. It's surprisingly easy to work with, actually... first computer build I had fun with in a long time.

As far as the TV tuner, insert tuner of your choice. I went with a rebranded ATi TV Wonder 650HD, made by Diamond Multimedia, because it came with a media center remote control... I later bought a Pinnacle USB remote control because it came with an IR blaster for controlling my set-top box. The Diamond remote also has very small buttons that are mashed together, and I was finding it very difficult to hit the right button in the dark... the Pinnacle remote control has fewer buttons, they have different shapes, and the remote is more ergonomically comfortable... it's not quite as good as the old Microsoft Windows XP remote, but it's still better than anything else I've tried.

For the optical drive, I'm using a USB Blu-Ray drive made by LG that I picked up from the Dell website back in January, and couldn't tell you the model number. It's main selling feature, aside from being USB, is that it's not a burner, so it only cost me $100. Not bad for a blu-ray drive ^_^. If you're planning on running Linux, you wouldn't need to worry about that, and can pick up a USB DVD drive anywhere. I'm connecting to the display via HDMI cable (with audio as well), but the motherboard has DVI and VGA display as well. AFAIK, Linux doesn't properly support HDMI (and that, along with Blu-Ray support was the main reason I went with Vista on it), but if you're planning on using VGA or DVI, you shouldn't have that problem.

About the only weird part that I had to MacGyver was an adapter plate... my TV has VESA 600x400mm mounts, and the mounting plate for the case has VESA 100x100mm holes. That, I actually found at Best Buy, of all places... I'm in Canada, but you can find the plate I used on both the US and Canadian sites by product name... I went with Best Buy because they had the best price on that kind of thing.

The VESA adapter plate. It comes in a kit with two, but you only need one of them... if you were near here, I'd give you the one I have left over, when you need it. That screws directly to the TV's mounting holes, and the mounting plate for the case connects to the VESA 100x100 holes that the adapter has. (the adapter also has 200x200 holes, if you go with a different case)

Finding screws that were short enough to use while keeping the heads and ends flush (so as to not scratch the TV's case, and so that the computer can actually sit on the mounting plate in the first place) was a bit of a chore... there, I'm afraid I can't help. I went to a local store called Ottawa Fastener Supply where I was able to find the M6 screws that my TV's VESA mount wanted, as well as the 4mm long pan head screws and appropriate nuts to fasten the computer's m

O. M. G.

How fucking hard can it be to create a simple, secure voting machine?

Start with this: http://www.staples.com/Amplivox-Aluminum-Truss-Lectern/product_683093?cmArea=SEARCH

Weld a steel box under it, lock one of these in it: http://www.logicsupply.com/categories/mainboards/nano_itx

A simple touchscreen on the top: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824103028

A 2-ply receipt printer: http://www.posmicro.com/RECPRINTERS/SAMSUNG_PRINTERS/samsung_srp_270_receipt_printers.htm (Also locked in a box, with an extra-large roll of paper)

Then, have a secure server in a cage in the corner of the room. Have the voting terminals boot over network from the server. All they need to run is a simple interface that shows the names of the candidates and allows you to touch to select them. Then it prints a receipt for you, keeping the other copy internally.

Sure, there are details to iron out, but come on, it can't be that hard.

Use read-only media. The read-only media should have a physical write-enable switch, like an SD card or USB key, so you can do updates from a clean boot. Then disable writing and boot. For more info: Read only linux

Do you really think server farms need those desktop casings?

http://www.logicsupply.com/products/boxd945gclf2

BTW your link is "supply the drive and RAM". Mine is "supply the power supply, drive and RAM" but I think server farms would go for custom power supply anyway.

$300 is dirt cheap for an x86 PC with a touchscreen that huge.

See: http://www.logicsupply.com/categories/panel_pc

I'm sorry that you're not the target market. (Actually, I'm not either; I own 3 desktops :P ) Just be aware that although you don't find it useful or affordable, that doesn't discount the market entirely.

I mean, people pay $200 for a Chumby, and $240 for a PSP with $60 worth of hardware in it. This thing probably has $250 worth of hardware. It really is very affordable, if you require a touchscreen panel PC.

Because USB isn't implied for a "flash drive", you need to specify the interface (in this case, USB).

I keep seeing new boards like this come out, hoping one will have all the features I want for an ideal NAS (network attached storage) build. Right now, there is always some trade-off for what I want. Show me the board that has...

• Support for ECC RAM. AFAIK, all modern AMD CPUs all support ECC RAM. Seems like AMD should be able to make something that competes with the Atom on the low-wattage side of things. A full-blown 4850e or even Sempron is overkill.
• At least six SATA ports. Eight to 10 would be perfect. Modern Intel (ICH10) and AMD (SB700) chipsets seem to max out at six SATA ports. And Intel likes to pair the Atom with even older chipsets (ICH7 I think) that support at most four SATA ports.
• A PCIe x16 slot. Not necessary if and only if the motherboard has everything needed integrated. This requirement is really just a stop-gap, assuming the board itself will lack some crucial feature. Or for providing for unforseen future expansion.
• A built-in compact flash slot. My understanding is that PATA and CF are closely related (one is a subset of the other maybe?)... in this day and age, I would imagine PATA controllers are dirt cheap. But the idea is to use CF as the system drive, i.e. the place to hold the OS and config files. (You could also use USB + thumb drive, so as a compromise I'd settle for an on-board USB socket into which a thumb drive can be directly plugged.)
• At least one Gigabit LAN port, preferably a high quality controller like Intel makes. Two Gigabit ports for bonding would be ideal.
• Super-low power CPU. The load on this machine will be virtually all I/O. Intel Atom, AMD Geode, or even ARM should suffice.
• Chipset with sufficient IO muscle and integrated video without the high power consumption. The chipset Intel is supplying with the Atom is awful from a power consumption perspective (actually, none of Intel's chipsets are particularly low-power). AMD's 740G and 780G look decent, but still have way over-powered video. Super old school, VGA only video is sufficient. I'd even be happy with serial console only.

One board comes close: the VIA NAS 7800, but it doesn't appear to be available to the general public. And I don't see anything about supporting ECC memory. For no reason other than hearsay, I'm not so sure I'd trust important data to a Via chipset.

The next best, IMO (and I actually have one of these), is the Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2. Check out SilentPCReview's writeup on this board. Only problem: I'm not sure if it supports ECC or not (AMD CPUs do, but I've heard it still requires the motherboard vendor to enable it). One annoying problem is that the PCIe x16 slot is for video only---you can't put a SATA controller card, extra NIC or anything else useful to a NAS in there. Still, while it's a very low-power board when paired with the right CPU, it's still overkill for a NAS. In general, I think the power draw for a NAS (excluding the hard drives) should be under 15 Watts.

The Point of View Ion/Atom board linked above looks promising. But, as far as I can see, no compact flash, and probably no ECC memory support.

Is the CPU+motherboard cheaper than an Intel D945GCLF? (i.e. 81.00 $USD).

If you don't mind buying OEM, there's "solutions" like the eeePC Desktop, and the Dell Studio PC. But they can only work with USB tuners, it seems. Might not be your best bet. But if you have digital cable it should have firewire.

If you could go mATX, there's the C7-D board from Everex. C7-D 1.5GHz, CN700, but all it does for XvMC is MPEG2, and doesn't do higher than 1024x1024 it seems (no idea if it can do 1280x720, IE it's just a matter of surface, or if either side can't exceed that) It's 49$ 'round these parts:

http://pccyber.com/?v=product&i=MB-VIA-PC2500E

LogicSupply.com is running a few promotions to clear its C3 stock. The C3 with CN400 is supposed to be able to do XvMC with MPEG4 decoding at 2048x2048. It can do MPEG2 right now. But I have no idea if it can really deliver on MPEG4, with or without MPEG4. (This whole market is really stupid.) It's only 88$ right now. Pricey to be honest, but better than 200$+.

And you know what? I don't explore much...

http://www.logicsupply.com/products/vb7002g

PCIE x16. MiniPCI. C7-D 1.5GHz. CN896. The only downside to this little thing is that it isn't a Nano. But for 144$? Pretty damn great for miniITX. Just missing firewire. And hdmi. And TV out. But most new TVs come with VGA. If not monoprice.com has VGA --> component boxes. It has a S/PDIF connector you just need to pipe it out to the back of the case yourself.

You can even stick in a discrete card, like the HD3450 for some gaming.

For PSUs PicoPSU is the staple PSU. Cases, I don't know. You'll have to look around. And watch out, some motherboards only accept SODIMM.

...(particularly given that the slightly uglier but much, much more standard option of an embedded PC in a VESA mount is always waiting in the wings)...

You mean like this?

Here you go, CompactFlash to 44-pin IDE adapter:
http://www.logicsupply.com/products/cfdisk_2g

We can get an Intel D945GCLF Little Falls Mainboard with a built-in Atom 1.6 GHz for 80$, 512MB RAM for around 15$. An external brand-name keyboard is only worth 15$, a 9" screen is probably only 50$ (if we go LVDS or whatever direct connections are called), a battery shouldn't be more than 20$ and we can buy 4GB CompactFlash cards for less than 20$.

Since these are all retail prices, my question is: where's the 200$ laptop?

There are a number of 7" VGA LCD displays with touchscreens in use in the car computer hobbyist community. The low-end ones are around USD $250-$300.
http://store.mp3car.com/category_s/27.htm
http://www.logicsupply.com/categories/lcd_displays
http://digitalww.com/store/products.asp?cat=8

Take a look around there and I'm sure you'll find something that will work quite well.

Intel has a much better board than this, erm, intel motherboard: the Intel D201GLY2A Little Valley Mainboard, 79$ in bulk packaging. And yes, that's a mini-ITX with a serial and parallel port and yes that includes the CPU too, an Intel Celeron 220 1.2 GHz, Conroe-L (65 nm) based on Intel Core microarchitecture.

I bought a bunch of these for use at home. They seemed to work fairly well at first, and offered some fun when people would ask how I installed stuff onto something that that small and with no CD. On the down side, you can't stack them on top of each other because the amount of heat being radiated. Then there's the crappy Rhine NIC (or crappy NIC in combination with sundry other crappy components): moderate NFS usage would result in my logs filling up with kernel messages about lost packets, and one unit, which was to function as a dedicated log server, also lost packets.

Since then, I've sold them off to friends at a discount and picked up a few Soekris 5501s to replace them; oddly enough, they also use similar NICs, but I've never seen or experienced any problems whatsoever. I doubt I'll spend any money on VIA products in the future, but I'm sure they work well enough for many who do buy them. Either way, low power systems, when used appropriately can't be beat and for the average consumer, and they're definitely a nice improvement over those ubiquitous blue boxes bearing the Linksys logo.

I've had nothing but good luck with them. Combined with a mini-itx fanless case, these things make great appliances. Here's a great place to get them:

http://www.logicsupply.com/

At work, we used the mini-itx with fanless case for branch office VPN solutions using linux + openswan (which in turn connected back to checkpoint clusters as well as other branch office openswan gateways). At home, I have a VIA chipset m/b with an Athlon 3000+ processer which has been running great for me for a few years.

Try looking through the 3 categories of options here. In particular, in the last category (just listed as "Power Supplies") check into the PicoPSU units. Regardless, be aware that pretty much all of those small-scale power supply units require an external AC power adapter, but that's not a big concession given how much more flexibility it gets you.

Kids, and their "high technology"... You're going to spend all that money just to hook up your turntable to "line in"? Try mic in if you don't want to buy a pre-amp. Might be a bit tinny though.

How 'bout this?

Here is someone selling a firewall that has a 1GHz VIA C7 processor, and is running Monowall:

http://www.logicsupply.com/products/perimeter_r

Funny, we had a hotel that was having trouble with someone hammering the bandwidth. I wanted to build a Monowall firewall, but we ended up selling them an expensive wireless gateway. A year or two later, they were required, by the corporate office, to have 24-hour tech support for guests of the hotel. Since we didn't offer that, they outsourced. The company sent them a new gateway...which was Monowall running on a Sokeris board. No telling how much they are having to pay for that, either.

Don't know about throughput, but I have messed around with Monowall and liked it. Mikrotik also has a firewall, and is also a router. It will run on x86 based hardware, too.

Mikrotik's limitation seems to be more the hardware than the software. Here is a good review of someone trying to really push it to the edge when being used as a router:

http://blog.firebright.com/2006/10/12/experiments- with-high-speed-routing-and-solid-state-media/

As the guy said, Cisco is safe...for now. I'm impressed as hell by it, though. If I was filthy rich, I would buy the company.

Transporter_ii

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I'd rather spend my money on one of these keyboards, and then get a touch screen lcd
Then you could make a huge custom touch pad that also had software buttons for whatever you wanted.
Disclaimer: this is prior art =P

SSD Sata is 220 ma @ 5v.
SSD IDE is 37 ma @ 5v.
source

2.5" 7200rpm IDE on full seek 460 ma @ 5v
2.5" 5400rpm SATA on full seek 420 ma @ 5v
source(I think my calculations are correct)

With the increased seek speed of SSD I'd rather go with the IDE SSD because of the huge power savings.

"OSX is pretty but someone else with money can buy it."

Really? I was looking for a small, fanless mini-itx box the other day for a special purpose. I found this at $525 but still had to get memory, HD, and CD-ROM for it. I'm sure there is cheaper but hard to find the foot-print size.

Then it dawned on me that a Mac Mini is that size. Quiet and with more CPU, a HD, memory and a CD/DVD for less money. But, yeah, the Macbook Pro and G5s are more expensive than a cheap, plastic PC.

....if you really care.
But not many people need this kind of performance. OTOH Low power is more sexy.
Fanless is where it's at.