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Build Your Own Mini-Computer

Posted by michael on from the no-not-that-kind-of-minicomputer dept.

Bored in Chattanooga writes: "Tom's is running an article reviewing a Shuttle mini-computer. Seems to have everything the average computer user would need, minus a nice 3D graphics card. Perhaps the standard large ATX-size computer cases will cease to exist and be replaced by these "mini-computers." I find these gems cuter than any iMac I've ever seen!"

3 of 324 comments (clear)

  1. What about heat? by evilviper · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Of course a major problem with mini-computers is that there's just nowhere for the heat to go. Aluminum cases may help a small bit, but certainly not enough to accomidate an Athlon, Fast hard drive, etc. The air-circulation methods we've been using for so long just breakdown.

    If small PCs are to catch on, manufacturers are either going to need to make low-heat devices their bread and butter, or case manufacturers are going to need to realize that they can just add a little extra metal and actually CONDUCT the heat out through the case, instead of the much less effecient (although for some reason exclusively used) convection method.

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    Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
  2. Re:I own an FV24! by WasterDave · · Score: 5, Interesting

    One upped, a mate of mine did it with a Mac classic and a 9 inch monitor.

    http://www.cooljazzmotherfucker.com/PCMods/

    We played rocket arena off it (serving) for several hours the other day. It rocks.

    Dave

    --
    I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
  3. Re:better mini computer by seanadams.com · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The Ipic is almost certainly a hoax. This guy should *not* be taken seriously until he either:

    - Posts some technical details as to how he managed to pull it off.
    - Publishes his source
    - Sells a product based on this
    - Sets up a convincing demo

    Having spent the better part of a year writing a TCP/IP stack for the PIC, I can tell you with certainly that the features and RFC compliance he claims are simply impossible to fit into the 12XXXX parts. The ROM space certainly isn't there, even if everything is tightly hand-coded in assembler. the more obvious limitation however, is RAM. He claims to be running full TCP on a part that doesn't even have the space to hold a minimum-size packet in RAM for checksumming. I could get into a zillion other impossibilities of this project, but it's easier to just show you this page, a commercial PIC TCP/IP stack), which shows exactly how much RAM/ROM it takes to fit a tight TCP/IP implementation into the PIC. There's just no way you could fit this much into the 12-bit PICs.