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486 PC In 5 Cubic Inches?
[Dilbert] writes "I saw this first on ArsTechnica. The machine is a 486SX, fully SVGA compatible, 16 meg of ram, 2 16550A serial ports, hda = 16 meg flash, hdb = 340 meg IBM microdrive. Oh yeah, also built-in 10T ethernet, a floppy header, and parallel port. Granted, most of the ports are brought off the main unit via a 68-pin scsi-style cable to a little port board, but the meat of the machine is still tiny.
The manufacturer is Tiqit Computers." Don't lose it in your couch ;)
I'd have to agrre with you on this one... $1500 for a 486SX 66? Laughable. Bring the price down to $400 - 500 and add a faster CPU and the thing would be great for a lot of things including a nice tight cluster.
A quick flip thru a mag like Circuit Cellar reveals several embedded pc's like this one or, hey, this one is sporting a Penguin logo - what's sweet (and expensive) about the unit here is is the 340Mb microdrive.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Depends entirely on the application. Any project where space, power and weight are heavily constrained are potential targets. I thought of a couple: including one of those experimental electric car projects that you find at universities. Data collection and control would be good uses. A 486 is plenty fast enough if you're not running Windows, but finding that much processor horsepower that runs on a total of 7.5 watts is difficult.
How much power does your Athlon chip dissapate?
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Four years ago? My sister teaches in a school where they still use these now.
Sleep is just a poor substitute for caffeine, anyway. -Bob Lehmann
I doubt it would be out of production. If I remember an article I was reading about NASA (it may have been here) that they don't use a processor until all the bugs have been worked out and then only after something like 5 years. Henceforth, the processors that NASA are currently using are 486s.
Really?
I was under the impression that that a 486 doing nothing else (and from what I heard, NOTHING) could finish a work unit in a day...
Is your machine in active use?
Wiwi
"I trust in my abilities,
Wiwi
"I trust in my abilities,
but I want more then they offer"
Can I ask which school district?
"The Internet is made of cats."
The British drink their beer warm because Lucas makes refrigerators.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Ahh.. More like a week, my ppro 200 takes a day to do one..
The problem with it is that it isn't really that much smaller than the much more powerful SaintSong Expresso. The Expresso is packaged into a nice little walkman-sized box, uses Socket 370 so you can put in Celerons or PIII's at 466 or 500MHz, standard SO-DIMMs so you can put up to 256M into it, and laptop style IDE drives so you can get it with up to an 18G drive. It uses the Intel i810 chipset with included SVGA video (including S-Video outs), integrated sound, UDB and PS2 style keyboard and mouse ports. I've seen one running Linux, and it works pretty well. One of the few bad things about it I can think of is that it doesn't include on-board Ethernet, so you have to use a UDB->Ethernet adapter. You can get a little 'docking station' for it that includes a floppy drive and either a CD-ROM drive or a DVD-ROM. Using the S-Video out, you can use it as a very compact DVD player.
All that, and it isn't significantly more expensive than the little 486SX machine. If memory serves, we paid around $2000 for an Expresso with 500MHz Celeron, 128M RAM, 18G hard drive and the CD-ROM docking station.
Yes, I've seen one running Linux no less. Its a nice little box. You can find the manufacturer's page at:
http://www.saintsong.com.tw
Looks like the prices have come down a little since the one I've seen was purchased as well.
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
There are lots of better and cheaper alternatives out there, depending on your needs. You can get yourself a laptop. Or you can build something around a PC-104 or SBC system. Or you can buy a WinCE machine (e.g., the Compaq iPAQ) and install Linux on it.
I want a 16 mb flash for my desktop! Where can I get something that plugs into the PCI bus that has the IDE interface, like the i-opener or this little gizmo? /boot on it, the thing would boot in seconds!
It would be great to put my kernel and
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Hmm, makes the MacCube and the ColbaltQube actually look reasonably priced - both these beasts can run Linux and have nice form factor and looks.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
On the website it states it's the world smallest computer. That is BS. There is a site at stanford that has a K6 processor and an LCD with a 340mb hard disk for about twice the price of this. The real difference? The other one is about 5 inches by 3 inches.
Without the LCD its even thinner.
Don't forget the Dragonball processor used in Palm compatibles is a modified 68K.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Hard drive? Just set up a DHCP server, and have the system set up (through BIOS) to get its kernel and file system (which it would kep in memory) from the server. No hard drive, no floppy drive, or anything. I would ditch the idea of using the USB port for maintenance (just reset the system and get a fresh OS), rather use it for network (or better yet, use fiber).
Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
It looks like they just made the software for this, and assembled the hardware from elsewhere. I believe the h/w manufacturer is JUMPtec. I've been salivating over the tiny machines they make for a while.
they do call these things microcomputers after all. Finally the name almost fits the size.
Going on means going far
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
I thought IBM had out a larger microdrive... Why not use it? maybe its just too expensive or not out yet, but I would think more space would be at a premium, depending on what you are going to use it for. BTW, I agree its very cool, and yes, I want one, but what would you use it for?
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I think I would be far more interested in this if it were: A) Cheaper, $1500 is a little much for me to imagine dropping on what would only end up being another blinky toy. Or B) Shown actually doing something. There are really only so many times I can see installing BSD/Linux/BeOS/Windows/QNX before I start losing interest in life. And I am undercreative so I cannot see doing anything past installing an OS.
-prak
-prak
They could make a smaller unit if it weren't intel compatible. Heck, there are Linux ports to the Pilot (and OBTW, death to those that call them Palms). You could probably do a 68k based device in half the size running OpenBSD.
Free BeOS, runs from a Linux partition
The problem is it is more expensive than, and significantly less powerful than, but only slightly smaller than the SaintSong Expresso. The Expresso has also been around for at least a couple of months. I've seen both products, and the Expresso is much more of a polished product, as it comes in a nice walkman-ish package whereas the 486SX based box mentioned in this article is basically a bare board.
http://www.saintsong.com.tw
If they pull the price down though it makes an awesome Beowulf cluster. Think of 60 of these tiny things in one rackmount box.
They have sheilded 486's they've sent up, and remember the story a few (months?) ago about sending some G4's into space
Doesn't that violate export restrictions?
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+&x
d00d! It's Perl! What the hell do ya want? ;-)
CARS... think Mercedes
LART has 32MB DRAM, 4MB Flash ROM, serial, 10BaseT Ethernet (on separate board), PS/2 mouse & keyboard, IDE (44pin laptop IDE) (all on a single separate board, the "Kitchen Sink Board"), and more. Check out this picture: http://www.lart.tudelft.nl/gallery/vt2 20.jpg.
How can they manufacture this? Isn't the 486 out of production by far?
--
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
Thank you for telling me something I knew. It was a joke...
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I think a cluster of $1000 iMacs would severely trounce a matchbox cluster. And it's been done before... Read about it here.
Mr. Ska
To me that's a good argument. I wonder how Linux partitions work with the Mac... If I were in the market right now...
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Why can't somebody throw something like this in a handheld? I'd love to have more juice in my Palm...
Give a man a match, you keep him warm for an evening.
Light him on fire, he's warm for the rest of his life
IBM has the 440GP that includes a 500MHz powerPC core (no FPU), DDR memory controller, and PCI-X bridge all in one chip.
--
Don't lead me into temptation... I can find it myself.
Repeat story....we've already seen it, i believe the story was last titled something about matchbox size computers.
yes, mpg123 on a 486 works, but only if you skip frames.
Forgot the links:
This is a link to the PDF on the 440GP.
And if you don't like PDF, here you go.
--
Don't lead me into temptation... I can find it myself.
It's nice, though I've seen it before, and I thought I saw it here before as a "matchbox computer..." though I could be wrong. It looks like a neet system to start a wearable off of, though you could afford a bit larger unit in a wearable. Knock the price down too of course. It would be a fun hobby unit to tie into your robots if you like them like I do.
Oh yeah, an no offense, but I think they mean spelled, not spelt.
Eh...
Yes, for a mere US$1,495.00 you too can own a slow, limited computer that you're likely to sit on, lose in your briefcase, or have your dog eat. Spiffy.
I do have to admit that it's a great design, with lots of potential. PDA's will never be the same - nor will beepers, cell phones, etc. Just put a small projector or LCD screen on the thing, and you've got yourself a backpack (or belt-clip) computer. WONDERFUL. I LOVE it.
But COME ON... for US$1,495.00?!? I'd rather pay an extra $200 and get the OTHER really small computer.
Mr. Ska
There are gobs of stories here in slashdot about open designs like these. Problem is that 99.9% of all slashdot readers cannot manufacture the devices (6-8 level circut boards, SMT soldering station/rework station, SMT skills.... etc...
It could be done at home if you had about $1.2 million (US)dollars worth of tools. (This is new price, you might be able to find used tools for around $400,000 to $600,000 (again USD) A friend of mine has a basic rework iron (Tweezers for resistors/caps/coils) that cost him $650.00 the IR rework station he uses at work costs $5000.00 and that is without the special concetrator/iris to keep from frying the other components.
No, you will not build one of these. Hell I have access to the special tools and I cant. (The multi layer board is impossible at "home")
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
No. But someone had to say it, right? I guess you could get a WHOLE LOT of them in a very small area though. And you thought the G4 Cubes were compact and stackable...
# debian/rules
*sigh*...Ok, point well taken. Fine, I see no use for it. ;-)
Actually, I do. A wearable computer with a headmounted display would be pretty dang cool, except usually the computers are too heavy to be comfortable. I guess this makes it possible.
now all they need to do is integrate it with a cell phone, and have true wireless web. :-)
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I was saying you could make one of the little box computers a server if you just give it a HD. From there the clients could be set up the way you suggested, although I'd use an embedded Linux in all the machines and just have the clients mount the server for apps. And the USB would give you the possibility to expand the desktops to do just about anything. Need a graphics workstation just put on a USB color printer and USB scanner.
yeah, but can it run something pictured on this page?= ======
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If ignorance is bliss, wipe the smile off my face
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Sure, it's neat-o and geekworthy that it could be done, but is it practical?
Neat-o. Geekworthy. Impractical. Sure sounds like Slashdot material to me.
< tofuhead >
It is still the dark of night.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Oh my gosh, this product is as the mouse robot! but where is the case? huhu,, as you know 486sx price is $30? $40? this time. But is that about $1400?? you know? same price Powermac G4 400mhz dual. If somebody ask me "do you wanna take it??" my answer is "maybe I'll get a powermac g4 dual." because I think, nobody wants expansive 486sx...
I saw these being demoed at Defcon in the CTF area, and I was quite impressed by the size but I can't see how they justify the price of these, unless they come with the flatscreen LCD that was being used for the demo, but still.. I don't quite see any reason why someone would want to spend this much on a 486sx, regardless of size.
Not really. Try closer to 3 or 4. I had (have? dunno) a P120 w/ 73 Mb RAM, that took ~~ 53 hours to complete on WU. My new machine should be able to run them a little faster. A PIII 950 with 1 GB of RAM.... ;)
Glen
Glen
Track your fuel economy
You could probably fit an OpenBSD kernel, a SB16 sound driver, and a copy of mpg123 on to a floppy... I actually like mp3blaster (sorry, no link) the best - it's got a nice gui, and I think is based on mpg123.
Free BeOS, runs from a Linux partition
Unfortunately, a 66MHz 486-equivalent won't play back MP3s without skipping something awful, unless you knock the bitrate way down and use only mono. (Believe me, I've tried it.) :(
Heavens no!! It can't be. It mustn't be. The 486 was the last 'non-disposable' chip Intel made. They didn't really get onto the Microsoft 'upgrade spiral' marketting model until the Pentium - when they put more effort into backwards compatibility than into progress.
Motorola's 68000 is still out there. Not in Macs but in Sega Genesis machines. It's in A/C's and stereos and all sorts of household electronics. The Zilog Z80 (remember that one?) is still produced. In fact, one is probably looking over your ABS and airbag controls right now... Now, I don't know if I'd trust an Intel CPU (non-embedded that is; their embedded chips are fine) with life or limb, but there's plenty of room for it. Consumer electronics. A dedicated compression processor for digital telephony, HDTV, or a dedicated firewall box to go with your cable modem.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
And I thought typing on notebook keyboards with my fat fingers was rough...
While under construction our site is temporarily secured by a certificate your browser will not recognize, but whose integrity TIQIT vouches for.
They vouch for themselves? Well, that's reassuring...
Get the Dakota Scout 4-port KVM. It's about US$120 or UKP120 though cables are extra.
I have one and it's brilliant; it requires no external power, you can control it easily from the keyboard and you can run your display at 1600x1200 at high refresh rates with no loss of clarity. I could almost swear that mouse response is cleaner and snappier too.
The case of the unit is a little flimsy, but apart from that I have not found any other weak points in this product. It seems just perfect really.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I agree: there is a non-negligible overhead to testing, installing, and "homogenizing" computers.
However...The (60 minutes) overhead to completely wipe a hard drive, then reinstall a cheap network card, whatever OS and a low overhead web browser (ie-opera) is too much? Burn-in and go. If it dies, take another CPU/monitor/keyboard/mouse off the "just fixed" pile. Availability through redundancy.
Addition (in lots) to the existing school equipment auction would at least get it into someone else's hands and free up space. You see a dusty pile; someone else sees usable or repairable monitors; someone else sees a pile of rare-earth magnets and stepper motors; someone else is hoping you didn't pull all the memory and hard drives.
About noone here on Slashdot learned programming on anything faster than a 486.
John (crusty old auction / hamfest veteran)
It's been moded back up somewhat (look at the totals).
A hint for the moderators out there... if it has a smiley face, at least consider the fact that it is meant as "funny," not as "flame" or "troll."
And for the rest of the moderators, follow the second moderators example - if you see something that was unfairly moderated, mod it back up! A post that is genuinely brilliant will be modded up by someone - but not enough moderators will overturn another moderators trend.
All operating systems suck. Some just suck less than others. (and some are virtual black holes)
There was a thread a short while ago on the MG mailing list about how electrical components actually run on smoke, and if you let the smoke out, they cease to function. (ie - the car won't turn over if you let the smoke out the starter relay).
Vaughn Pratt, well now, let's see, what other computer company did he help found? something to do with *S*tanford *U*niversity *N*etwork if I remember correctly...
Our school was given some halfway decent Gateway 486 machines, but we couldn't implement them. Our problem was twofold: We run Token Ring and the fact that we couldn't (legally) install MS-DOS and Windows on the machines. I suppose there's always FreeDOS, but I have no idea whether or not that would work with the Netware client or if it even would work with ICLAS. ICLAS is IBM's Classroom LAN Administration System and it's REALLY picky about the environment it runs in. Not to mention the cost of the Token Ring Adapters would be more than the computers are worth. I suppose there is always EBay.... Just my two cents.
Nah. Better off just to port a fuel injection system from something more modern onto your vintage car.
I've got a 1974 Plymouth Valiant Brougham with a Slant-6. I've got most of the EFI system from a 1995 Jeep Cherokee with a 4.0L engine, and I'm well along the path towards getting it running.
The only part that I anticipate real trouble with, is actually recalibrating how the computer reads the mass airflow sensor, since at a given engine speed and throttle position, the slightly smaller Slant-6 won't inhale quite as much air... :)
For troubleshooting, just use a diagnostic cable (available from the dealer) and a notebook computer.
Why build it, when it's already done for you?
No, wait, I'm just asking for something else to break down on my car.Heheheheh... You are, after all, talking about British cars. Probably no matter how badly you kludge any additions together, they'll probably still be more robust and reliable than Lucas Electrics.
Here's a thought, if you're handy, your car troubles you, and originality isn't an issue: Rewire it. It's not that tough.
Figure out how to mount a 1980 or so GM alternator onto your engine. They're great, and the American/Canadian GM alternators have built in regulators. Literally, run the positive lead to the battery, and it works. Run another lead to a lightbulb on the dashboard and you'll know when it doesn't work.
GM also had the best distributors at about that time, and I know that there are mounting kits out there that will let you use the GM HEI system on almost all American engines, as well as many imports (VW Beetle, Volvo, etc). Drop the distributor into the engine, connect the spark plug leads, run a wire from the B pin on the bottom of the distributor cap to the positive terminal on the battery, and it will work. (Add an ignition switch in there somewhere for practicality.)
I'd reserve that little 486 for running the large LED sign that you could build right into the trunklid, across the back of your car, telling people to get off your tail when they get too close. I wonder how it would feel to drill holes for a 16 x 160 LED matrix into my trunk...
<grin>
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
DMZ stands for DeMilitarized Zone. Basically, a decent firewall will have three interfaces--external, internal, and DMZ. The DMZ is where you put your servers and (ideally) anything you want accessible to the Internet at large. This keeps incoming (possibly hostile) traffic away from your internal machines. It also maintains a degree of separation between your Internet-accessible and possibly compromisable machines and the protected computers behind the firewall.
--Phil (The ipchains HOWTO talks a bit about DMZs, too.)
355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation!
My 486/100 takes 125 hours (5 days) per workunit.
Nope, he was right. A Pentium 60 does a work unit in less than half the time of a 486DX4/100. I have one right behind doing nothing but crunching SETI (and occasionally acting as a storage system), and it definitely takes 100-150 hours per unit.
"The Internet is made of cats."
Ok, or I could purchase a PC/104 (486/66) card, a flashdisk (for the kernel), and a ethernet card, hook up a floppy drive to burn a image of the Distro (find a nice tiny linux distro with IP stack that fits on a floppy), immediately mount a partition from another linux box, download and uncompress my target application onto the flashdisk. Unmount the drive, drop TCP/IP support and run my application. Periodically, the system brings itself back onto the network and dumps data to the fileserver and looks for updated scripts and code. Total hardware cost is well under $750 if you buy these in enough bulk.
What would I do with these you ask? Everything from motor control (for an additional $200 bucks) to some small data aquisition and processing (up to $500 bucks if you want something real special), perhaps some RS-485 communications ($200 bucks) to specialized hardware.
Regardless, I can build a whole system which has a lot of functionality for a whole hellova lot cheaper. No I don't get dazzling graphics and/or performance, but if you're purchasing a 486, thats probably not what you're looking for.
Could I do this with Windows CE? Honestly I don't know... I've never used it, I don't know what the code-bloat is like for it.
a system like this is probably 3.5x4x3 (with cabling) excluding a power supply... which you can work around on many apps... I can fit this in a whole lotta places.
For my apps, a G4 would be like using a 50lb sledge hammer when I'm looking for a jewlers hammer.
You say you want a revolution?
Who would of ever thought 10 years ago, computers would be this small.
People have been talking about putting a web node in every major appliance- vending machine, atm, car, refrigerator. When a full-featured computer becomes small and cheap, this is possible. The web protocol is not the best, but is is standard and cheap.
Dude, get a fricking clue. According to your logic, the computer itself is nothing new anyway. I'm talking about new applications for something its size. Yes, you can get a wireless phone, but they don't use http. It also doesn't do a headmounted VGA display. Does is suck when you realize that you can't spel log cabbin?
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I'm sorry. The number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again.
Just think.. with one of these, you could build a PDA that would run Windows95!!! No WinCE, or Pocket PC crap.. You would have the REAL DEAL!!!
How exciting... uh.. yeah...
wish
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Just think, you hook enough of these things together and you may be able to do something usefull with it!!
I dont have a
I've heard that if you certain programs are capable of it (because of being more efficient), but I could be wrong. I've tried running winamp on a 40Mhz 486. That was interesting. It played it, but not in real time. It was slowed by about half normal speed...sounded pretty cool on some songs, actually. :-)
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I'm sorry. The number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again.
I wonder if this could qualify as a Seti Accelerator? Just hook it up inside your machine and let it go.
;-)
A 486 should be able to finish a unit in about a day right?
Wiwi
Wiwi
"I trust in my abilities,
Wiwi
"I trust in my abilities,
but I want more then they offer"
I dunno, while your idea is good, maybe buying a box fan and some little blocks of syrofoam or something to seperate them for airflow.
My PC laptop BURNS things that touch it after a while, but it's fan is broken (I was wondering why it was so quiet).
My iBook runs great, not a lot of heat.
Dan
Cool, I could put this in my primitive Triumph and put in all sorts of neat-o diagnostic equipment. I could type in commands like "tune -l /dev/carburettor" or run top to see how the vital stats of the engine, temprature and other things are doing. No, wait, I'm just asking for something else to break down on my car.
I'm surprised how tiny the included hard drive is - even with the size restraints. After all, IBM now sells what they claim is the "World's Smallest Hard Disk Drive", packing 1 GB on "a disk the size of an American quarter." See IBM's Web Site for details. Since price doesn't seem to be a concern for the manufacturers, (come on, $1500 for a 486?) I'm at a loss why the didn't choose to go with a larger hard drive. A GB is a little excessive but I'm sure there are smaller drives out there that take up even less room.
Wow, I envy that school. At my old high school there were perhaps three Macintosh Performas (~60Mhz I believe) "distributed" throughout the classrooms and a cluster of twenty 286s, I kid you not, for research in the library. The only thing those were good for was MUDding when the librarian wasn't looking. Later on we got an Imac cluster, but kids weren't allowed to use any of them indivivualy due to lack of available supervision, and teachers couldn't bring a class in unless they took a training course in computer admin. They were some darn pretty paperweights though.
Green-voting, republican-registered, socialist-libertarian.
The only reason this is so expensive is because it isn't in true mass-production. I say build one of these things into a mobile phone, phrow in one of those new tiny LCD displays and we can get rid of WAP forever! Who wants WAP when you can have real HTML? Also, imagine how many contacts/phone numbers you could store in that 340mb HDD :-)
...this is getting out of hand
They are not worth the power consumption that they require, unless you live somewhere thats really really cold in the winter, then you could heat an entire building with that cluster.
Lars -
It would be cool if the price didn't make my rectum slam shut. I think maybe this thing is sort of a red herring. I suppose the rationale for using the hideously outdated 486 (You know it's outdated when I have 12 of them in my basement) is that compared to Pentium class machines, it's power consumption is fairly low. I think maybe a more permanent solution to the size issue is for chip makers to really start trying to make their proccessors in such a way that doesn't require a diesel generator and an anvil sized heat sink. All bitching aside though, my laptop is an old 486 thinkpad running slakware, and it's just fine for lying in bed MUSHing or whatever. Hell it even plays MP3's......badly.
Quite sadly, my school, for all the computers it does have, it doesn't have a single CS AP course. The theory is that not enough students are interested to hire even a part time CS teacher. I'd try to convince them otherwise, but I'll be gone before they will be able to act.
The school gets grants (usually around election time) for the new computers it uses to teach. These grants already pay for new computers and the people required to install them. These systems come configured and customized to fit the school's needs, without bothering with 300 non-standard systems that rarely arrive in working order. The school doesn't get any grants to pull old systems out of storage and try to get them all to work they way we need them to. In the end, it is more expensive for the school to try and implement donated systems than it is to accept government grants for new ones.
Sure, it would be more a efficient use of tax dollars just to take those old ones out, but the school isn't concerned with that. Sure, a 486 could be used for most classroom purposes (and in some cases they are; most of the classrooms without new computers already have old ones), but so can an iMac, so we might as well use the newer option while we have it.
We don't need new computers. We don't need computers at all. But they're here, we've got 'em, and what's wrong with using them? Why should we be forced to use the random 386 you finally decided to dispose of, when the politicians feel like throwing money at kids?
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I've just purchased two ucSimm modules with a DragonBall and running CLinux. The whole thing, with 8 Megs of RAM, 2 Megs of Flash ROM and an Ehternet chip fits in a single old-style 30 pin RAM socket!
For those who care, a DragonBall is officially a Motorola 68EZ328 processor running at 16 MHz. CLinux is a version of our favorite OS designed for chips with no MMU (Memory Management Unit), and fits nicely into the 2 Megs of flash ROM.
Black holes are where God divided by zero
Fresno Unified School District.
Good luck.
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Hell with 1Ghz CPU's. Give me a half speed computer, preferably on one chip, for $99.
Most of the systems are owned by the district, not the school. We can't even throw them away without asking the people downtown, who, as I said, think they're more valuable than they really are and refuse to dispose of them.
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I mean, once you've installed Linux and Napster, you can't fit much pr0n on a 340Mb hard disk.
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Sure enough, this story and the X86still story from todays quickies have both already been on Slashdot before... why the repeats?
MP3 players--the mpg123 project is where it's at. XMMS uses a "libmpg123", which is based off mpg123. Not sure what freeamp uses as its codec, but the 'mpg123' program is by far THE premier MP3 decoder for Linux :)
the real at&t mix
mpg123 claims to be able to do it on a 486 - just don't try anything else with it!
Free BeOS, runs from a Linux partition
Have you any clue how cheap $1,495 is for this device? This is a godsend for device manufacturers that need a complete embedded controller. This won't be running desktop software. It'll probably get QNX or WindRiver installed on it. This is an emedded device.
Free BeOS, runs from a Linux partition
I do computer work for my local public school, and I can tell you that at least here, we have way too many 386s and 486s. Some company decides it'll be a nice tax write off and our school becomes a giant storage bin for computers no one wants. Occaisionally, we ship as many as we can off to "less fortunate" schools, but frankly the things are too slow and too old to be worth the time and effort required to implement them in a classroom setting. Why bother explaining to the students and teachers how to use an antiquated system that will be gone as soon as the school gets more money?
We got a rather large "Digital Highschool" grant a while back, specifically devoted to buying new computers. With it, the school bought enough computers to fill at least two new computer labs that I can recollect (one group of 300mhz PCs for a computer-literacy/typing class and one set of iMacs for the library), and when I last left they were planning more new purchases. The science department specifically got some sort of grant that paid for two roaming sets of iBooks to share amongst several classes.
All this money and all these new computers, and about 200-300 486 or older PCs sitting around in various storage rooms waiting to be shuffled off to some place else while they just get older. The school can't sell them because no one wants them and it can't throw them away because someone thinks they're more valuable than they really are.
So, when you donate that old clunky 486 and think it's going to be used, think again. The school doesn't have the time or the money to homogenize and install 300 old computers that were sitting in someone's closet. If you really want to help the school out, sell the computer at a garage sale and donate the money.
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Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!!
sigh... the burden has to fall on someone, I guess.
A more productive use might be as a device logger in a plant. It would be easy to make this baby shock, fire, steam, and water proof. The more daring might even use it to control things.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Well actually if you go for a KVM switch with a manual switch rather then a hotkey type. You can find a decent one at a computer show for about 45 dollars that works just as well as anything blackbox or other IT places have. add about 20 dollars for all the cabling at the same place, not a bad deals at all
Code softly but carry a big magnet.
Is too expensive and still needs an external power.
I still prefer my palm, but in case you need
some small number cruncher, this thing could work.
OverLord
Here's another application which hits home for me; .60 engine (approximately 15 minutes), then something like this might be vary usefull. On the other hand, there are general purpose embedded systems which probably do better on the power requirements with comparable form factor (not quite that small) which are a whole lot cheaper and may be better suited to those specific (embedded) applications.
if you are building an autonomous flying helicopter which can only lift a total of about 25 pounds including power supply, fuel, and control hardware, you need something very small (both mass and form), something with enough processor speed to handle polling of devices at several hundred times per second (including video, GPS, and rangefinder/leveler), and have to do it for at least as long as the whole thing can fly on available fuel, preferably a full tank on a
Data collection doesn't usually need such form factor; nor does it need a general purpose machine such as a 486 w/ a huge hard drive. I wonder if there are any general purpose applications which require such a form factor? That would be the niche for this device.
The only reason I can see this as being useful is as an mp3 player. :-) Oh well, what's the point of any peice of technology that's on the edge? Guess this is another example of Edison's newborn baby argument.
I still think the spud server was way cooler, though.
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I'm sorry. The number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again.
why?
I think that it's about time that someone made a decent attempt at creating a handheld computer without resorting to specialised chips and operating systems.
All it needs now is a small LCD and keyboard to complete the job.
Windows - The only virus with a built in OS...
Why doesn't someone manufacture a cigarette box sized computer with just a processor, memory, and a USB port. From that you could plug in a monitor, keyboard and whatever else you needed for the task. Your server would then just be a little box with a external HD plugged and a network interface plugged into it. A client machine would just be a little box with a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and a nic interface.
Maybe, even, dare I say it you could string a bunch of them together and make some sort of cluster.
my old Packard bell is a 486/66 maybe I can get rid of all the plastics and usless parts and by then I shoudl have somethign about this small.
Dallas is giving away their OS, apps, docs, schematics, and source for free from their site.
I'm surprised that the TINI never made it on Slashdot before. Who cares about 486-that-fits-in-my-pants-and-costs-as-much-as-a-P C systems when you can do just about the same for much less? Sure, it's neat-o and geekworthy that it could be done, but is it practical?
... it's how you use it.
...
Scenario: you're on a date and it's in your pocket on sleep mode. Your date caresses your hand, and you move. At the same time, the HDD wakes up. Now you have a very comic sound coming from your pocket.
I'm just saying
For this money you better buy an eMPEG
specs are better and it even fits in your car
Why would anyone buy a 486 PC with an anemic 16 mgs of ram and tiny drive options...when one can purchase an elegant fast G4 cube... Honestly, I worry about some people
Computers are tools. Thats it, tools. Course I'm probably a tool as well.
I like the design, but the price is WAY to expensive for any practical use. If the price was less than half of that, it would be competitive of whats already out there, but wow, almost 3/4 inch bigger.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
It's perfectly small, now imagine clustering them.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If someone puts Start Office on this thing I would laugh. That will be very funny.
The way we're SUPPOSED to do things, connecting to the internet with a home system needs 3 more service boxen.
1: A firewall, running nothing else.
2: A box on a DMZ, for any services you want to offer for incoming connections, perhaps SSH for yourself, at the very least.
3: A dedicated logging box.
Plus a fourth box, if you want proxies or the like. I also find mod_roaming and a local IMAP server handy if the desktop is dual boot. Maybe these could be safely be put on Box 2, above, but a purist would probably say not.
This is a lot of boxes, even if old 486's are cheap. It's starting to run into a lot of floor space and electricity. I like the idea of these tiny computers for this role. All 4 desired computers should be able to be packed into the space of one regular sized unit.
Too bad the subject system costs $1500.
Is there anything fairly small, but very cheap? I keep seeing talk of 1U rack mount cases, but those are pretty pricey, themselves.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Surely there must be /. regulars who could work out how to build a very minimalist system for ourselves. What i'd like is something like this, just with the 16meg of flash with ethernet & serial.
:)
That way it would be possible to build cool linux devices u could plug into your lan and do stuff with
I spent some time with these two modules - the JumpTec PC and Ethernet/Video combo. It looks like they spent a lot of time minimizing the board layouts so that they could drop the pins between them and plunk on a microdrive - very slick!
Yes, believe it or not, you CAN install Windows 95 on this thing - a friend of mine (who now works at M$, RIP) loaded it on ours and said it was the "cleanest install I've ever done". Who'd of thought? :)
http://www.tiqit.com/icons/plugged2.jpg is the great picture. The same as above, but enlarged about 2x.
How can you fit 486 PCs in such a small place?
Or is it a proportionnal calculation of how many linuxes you can boot from a mainframe brought down to 5 cubic inches?
;)
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but i cant stomach the price tag. think of the possibilities! i want one but i think i will have to either wait for the price to drop or get a crappy less capable device...
the really sweet features to me are the ldc support and the ethernet support.
just put together a little minimum install system of your favorite distro and set it to boot up to the daily news as scooped from sitescooper or whatever and display it on your lcd for easy viewing with a small computer.
neat
Simple. They're summer re-runs.
486 PCs in 5 cubic inches.
Rich
This isn't the first time recently. The recent Ask Slashdot article about high-school computer courses was posted about 6 months ago. Slashdot seems to be recycling stories.
Please Slashdot, if you're short on news, just leave it blank. Sometimes no news is good news.
???
I put together a firewall once. It was a 486 with 32MB ram, floppy (no HD), and two 3C509 cards. It fit into the cardboard box I got my latest Maxtor Hard Drive in. I could have made it smaller than that if I wanted. Think about it: what do you really need for a computer? Motherboards are about 10x9, and the network cards/floppy adds a few inches of height. The power supply really adds a chunk of space, but if one has three or four of these boxes, they can share a power supply.
Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.