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Paperweight or Computer? You Decide!

Posted by michael on from the looks-like-a-pencil-sharpener-to-me dept.

Swaza1 writes: "While looking for something else I came across this embedded system at Web Techniques, which looks a lot like a paperweight I have on my desk. Good golly ... Intrinsyc included 10BaseT, serial, and USB ports on it and it comes in Windows CE or LINUX flavors. When can I get a system in the shape of Snoopy-sleeping-on-his-doghouse desk lamp for my kid?"

6 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. Pictures of Boxes That Small by dew · · Score: 5
    I went to the RSA 2001 Conference up in San Francisco, and the Embedded Systems Conference was just across the street, so I dropped by with my digital camera. I managed to take several pictures of these boxes in various form factors. You may (or may not) be interested.

    David E. Weekly

    --

    David E. Weekly
    Code / Think / Teach / Learn
    h4x0r for

  2. Watchout for that USB by victim · · Score: 5

    That USB is a `B' type connector. In other words you can plug it into your host computer as a peripheral. You can not plug USB devices into it. It is not a simple wiring difference.

    That will rule out all those nifty USB peripherals that you might want to plug into this device. So long to cameras, printers, audio devices, keyboards, controllers....

    I suppose it could be useful for initial programming, but I suspect the only reason it is there is that it is on the SA1110 chipset (which is aimed at handhelds). I also recall that the USB implementation on the SA1110 has (or had) some sort of congenital problem. I believe you would find more in the LART archives. (Which is also available now, but at something like twice this price and no cool aluminium box, but a fully open sourced hardware design.)

    (Ok, against all slashdot culture, I have done my own research and looked up the aforementioned USB problem. It is the SA1100 which could only be used as a slave, and it had to be the only device on the bus for it to work as documented in the errata. I don't know if the SA1110 has this problem or not. Intel app note here.)

  3. Pricing question by GrEp · · Score: 4

    Why is the Linux version the same price as the WinCE version? Is M$ giving CE away for free, or am I missing something?

    bash-2.04$

    --

    bash-2.04$
    bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
  4. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  5. Potential core for a robot? by dstone · · Score: 4

    Cut the power cord and add some motors and wheels. You could plug the little guy into your LAN and telnet into it (sorry, SSH into it) for programming, etc.

  6. Add a 6GB micro drive to this thing by zelbinion · · Score: 4

    IF you could get more storage into this thing, it might be interesting:

    Drop in a 6GB IBM micro drive, and you've got a halfway decent small-bandwidth web server.

    add some mp3's and a PCMCIA sound card, and have it play They Might Be Giants all day long.

    NFS mount to another box and make it a really cool dumb terminal. (that's REALLY dumb, with no monitor...)

    put a usb camera with it, apache, and a wireless network card -- instant portable voyeur-cam!

    network a bunch of them together and make a beowul... er, never mind, bad idea.

    paint it black/green, install an IRC server and use it to assimilate/control all of the windows CE versions of the cerfcube with IRC bots -- send it to Steve Gibson. Put it on a string and swing it around your head and make engine sounds--The borg cube lives! Resistance is mostly futile!

    Plug 400 of them into your home network, and use them to DDoS your internet-enabled weather-forecasting toaster. (of course, only if it supposed to rain today)