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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.

SBC stands for: Single Board Computer

3.5" and 5.25" seem to be standard sizes.
Of course, 3.5" doesn't really mean 3.5"

The specs I looked at (first google result)say that the
3.5" SBCs are actually 5.75" Length x 4" Width (146mm x 101.6mm)

If you are interested. I was going to build such a system as you describe. It would be smaller than a nano-itx system as well.

I was going to use a Evalue Tech ECM-3611-a1 3.5" SBC

http://www.tri-m.com/products/evalue/ecm3611a1.htm l

US$280

Pretty good deal. Only downsides I see to my choice in board, it only does Stereo sound, and no TV output. But easily rectified with a scan converter, and say a pcimia sound card attatched to the PC104+ expansion (supports 3 PC104+ devices.

Nano-ITX doesn't excite me, much smaller formfactors already exist for relitively the same price. PC104+ is pretty cool option too.

This isn't a serious way to get any indication of the performance of a flash-based HD replacement.

The SD equipment you're testing is very different from a solid-state disk system, even if the basic flash technology that actually keeps the bits is the same. The SD interface was designed to be tiny, not to be blazing fast. And the SD card probably contains only a single flash part, whereas a solid-state disk unit is likely able to read from or write to many flash parts in parallel. It wouldn't be fair to condemn all magnetic systems as slow based on the performance of a Microdrive unit, and it isn't fair to condemn all flash systems as slow based on the performance of this SD card.

Also important is that you're testing cached reads and buffered writes, which might be useful system metrics but tell you nothing about the mass-storage hardware in isolation. The whole purpose of caching/buffering is to hide the timing characteristics of the underlying storage. If the system software and device drivers supply a large system RAM buffer for HD writes but not for USB mass storage devices, then one would expect slower USB writing, even if both interfaces were actually ultimately connected to the same mass storage hardware.

In many real-world applications, it's seeks, and not the reads or writes themselves, that consume the most time. Flash obviously has it all over mechanical systems when it comes to seek times, and flash-based HD replacements are generally specified very competitively with real HDs when it comes to sustained transfer speeds. This one claims 44MB/s sustained writing - considerably more than whatever your buffer-obscured HD is actually capable of, I'll wager.

You could boot from a solid-state drive, and store all your media files on a noisy server somewhere else. Then your only problem is the local optical drive. You could do without the optical drive if you've already got a stand-alone DVD/etc. player, and now you're silent. I haven't tried booting from a flash drive on a windows system, but it should be possible. One of these http://www.acscontrol.com/Pages/Products/CompactFl ash/IDE_To_CF_Adapter.htm will turn your CF card into an IDE drive, or use an all-in-one DiscOnChip http://www.tri-m.com/products/msystems/ffd35ideplu s.html. It doesn't require drivers, so one should be able to install any OS on it.

You could even retrofit your Zalman PC, and poof! now your TiVo is the loudest thing in the living room.

There are already a bunch of those in the market, and has been so for a few years. For example the ZFx86 is available, and some manufacturers do base SBCs and PC/104s on it, such as Tri-M's MZ104+.

And of course, it runs Linux! The full 32-bit version, and not the memory management-less ucLinux thing.

Ended up using a Nova 8890, which fits in a 5.25" drive bay footprint. There's a nice industrial brick type case for this. No removable storage, though; this is industrial, not entertainment. Industrial temp range, watchdog timer, etc.

Looking for pricing? Here you go. Of course, you will probably want to look at exactly which drive is which first.

Looking for pricing? Here you go. Of course, you will probably want to look at exactly which drive is which first.

What if you could boot from this drive?

You can't.

If it were Flash Ram

It isn't. The drive uses volitile DRAM.

Wishing that a product was something completely different is useless speculation. Wishing a different product existed and affordable is different. M-Systems make solid state flash disks. A 4GB IDE flash disk costs about $3500 USD.

Many of us aren't "missing the point." This DRAM disk as sold is not particularly usefull except purhaps in some limit roles. (I will note that I have yet to read a post where this device is better then more system ram.)

The idea of storeing your system state at boot and loading that at boot has potential. My compture has a hibernate mode already where the system state is stored to disk and reloaded at boot time. I find that it isn't much faster to return from a hibernate state then to reboot in the first place . I am not sure how much faster booting as you propose would actually be.

The important question is why do you care so much about your reboot times? Specifically why would you want to spend so much money simply to increase your boot times? I reboot my laptop fairly often as I prefer to leave it off while the laptop is being transported. The boot times don't bother me. What I would spend money on is a faster hard drive. A faster hard drive would speed up boot times, and increase overall system performance.

It is also worth checking out IEI. Check out the embeded single board computers. Embeded SBC There is quite a variety of socket370, transmeta, and NS Geode boards. For ordering boards in Canada contact Tri-M. Not all boards are listed on the website but most are listed in the pdf price list(in USD). I have not ordered anything from these guys yet. I am considering a ISS-102R-300 board, with 3 ethernet, and NS Geode 300mhz, for $275 USD. Or possibly one of the compact socket 370 boards.

It is also worth checking out IEI. Check out the embeded single board computers. Embeded SBC There is quite a variety of socket370, transmeta, and NS Geode boards. For ordering boards in Canada contact Tri-M. Not all boards are listed on the website but most are listed in the pdf price list(in USD). I have not ordered anything from these guys yet. I am considering a ISS-102R-300 board, with 3 ethernet, and NS Geode 300mhz, for $275 USD. Or possibly one of the compact socket 370 boards.

The MZ-104+ from Tri-M sounds like it would fit the bill nicely. I haven't tried it myself, but I found out about it when someone replied to a similar post I made on slashdot recently :-) I'd already built myself an OpenBSD firewall by then, but if I hadn't, I'd definitely be looking at the MZ-104+.

Given your needs (dual ethernet, linux support), check out http://www.tri-m.com

No, I don't work for them, (but I do work a stone's throw away) but I am going to be trying out a board for a custom vpn type of thing.

Pricing is around $600, but that's Canadian.

Just a thought.