Slashdot Mirror
Improving Computer Form Factors?
eschasi asks: "Recently we've been seeing some trend towards
smaller footprint machines like the new iMac or the tiny PC system
shown in this
recent article. All these tiny systems have scalability or quality
problems for me, and I don't think it has to be that way. But all the
solutions I see require discarding much of what we think is standard
to desktop/deskside mechanical design for PCs. Apple has been able to
do with much more freedom becuase they own the whole process. PC
makers, however, don't. The last major improvement to PC
motherboard/case design was the ATX design, and that was evolutionary
rather than revolutionary. I think that major improvement can still be
made in an evolutionary way. I want both worlds: I want a small
footprint; I want it in a premium system; I want it to have enough
room for a pair of hard drives, a 5.25" external slot, and a 3.5"
external slot; and I want it using largely off-the-shelf components,
and I don't want to have to re-invent ATX and PCI and ya-da-day to
get it!" Do you feel the same way? How would you improve the
current crop of PC form factors?
"IMHO large chunks of the problem could be solved by taking
advantage of both sides of the motherboard. Put the CPU and most of
the misc. chips on one side, put the expansion slots and RAM on the
other. The case design would have to change but that's quite doable.
Using both sides of the motherboard does more than reduce footprint
by half while returning to full expandability. You also get the
benefit of having the RAM sit directly opposite the CPU, reducing
trace length problems and permitting RAM bus speed increases. Other
timing problems might also be reduced.
I've left aside the rest of my extensive arguements for why this is
or isn't a good idea; what I'm interested in is this:
- Do other people see the same drawbacks with small-footprint systems?
- What seems to be out there on the drawing board for post-ATX systems?"
ok, so does smaller form factor mean better? well, in terms of space yes, but how about the heat?
"Trying is the first step towards failure" - Homer J Simpson.
The reason ATX has been the last major change in PC form factors in a while is because it was about the last thing we could really need from it. However, I do agree that there should be smaller or larger form factors available, ATX simplifies the whole process by allowing case/power supply builders to create a bulk supply of the same thing. If you want something different, build it yourself, or pay someone to build it for you. It goes back to my old equation. In order to invent something, your need has to overcome the time needed to invent it, and the resources used in creating it.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
I imagine thermal output will have to be looked at closely - since your drives/cards will be much closer than they ever were to that nice new fast and HOT AMD chip. Of course your CPU fan could probably serve to cool the whole system if done right.
If this is going to catvh on it'll have to be standardized - kinda like car stereos - otherwise various sound cards and/or video cards and wires are gonna hit each other.
One last thing - working on these motherboards/systems is gonna be like working on modern cars as opposed to 1970's muscle cars where you could almost sit inside the hood as opposed to today where you almost have to be Plasticman or Mr. Fantastic..
..........FULL STOP.
With the market like it is in the countries where people will be buying computers, the "footprint" system doesn't make up for in style what it drops in price. Currently, the people who are buying computers are either looking for power or affordability, not a suave appearance.
You might say this isn't true, but the majority of computer users aren't "geeks". Since the computer isn't so widespread that it's in every room of the house - usually, there's one or two an "affluent" household - people can hide them away in offices which aren't going to be seen by your houseguests and the like, making the "style" thing unnecessary. Furthermore, the consumer has gotten so used to the grey-box case that it's still considered "in style".
That's not to say that someday in the future, the smaller, chic computer won't become more widespread. I think the problem is that the consumer isn't willing to spend more AND sacrifice power to do it, and currently, that's what they've got to do.
I'm having trouble getting to the slashdotted article. But let me say how nice it would be to have the audio connections in a convenient place up front. It bugs the hell out of me to have to reach behind my PC, which is a mess of wires.
If a smaller form factor is to succeed, it would need to rely on wireless peripherals. The big problem is the tangled mess of wires in the back. For all the shortcomings of laptaps, at least everything is built into the design rather than relying on peripherals to do everything.
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
So? Get a SCSI SCA bay and some decent SCA trays and there you are. Works like a charm.
I'm with the submitter that smaller form factors are nice. However one thing that I know they can control right here and now is the presence of HANDLES on the cases.
I'm an avid gamer. I had to buy a third-party (albeit excellent) product from CaseAce to help me carry my box to LAN parties etc. And I got a flat-screen monitor that was easier to carry than my 17" monitor.
But if computer manufacturers would just put a stout handle built in to the case, that would go a long way towards making me happy. Same thing for monitor builders, although I understand the problem is different for them.
For instance, look at the Gamecube. Arguably as much power as the other gaming platforms, but much easier for portage purposes. Why can't computer makers take a hint here?
-- Mojo Tooth : exploring our world as only an idiot can.
A case should only be 1U high. Air could be moved across all boards with fewer fans, and start stacking to get the over all volume down...minimize L x H x W
--
$ whoami
nobody
but not the XBox, it doesn't solve any size problems. I like the idea that I don't have to open the computer to change cards. But I would also like to not have to fiddle with ribbon cables. I want all my drives 5.25 and 3.5 to be hot swap. Just slide in and out while the computer is on, and they get auto configured like USB. Also nix the PS/2, serial, and paralell ports. I want like 8 USBs instead of 2. And on RAID boards with 4 IDE plugs put them all next to each other. Not two in the normal spot and two over by the PCI slots.
Putting stuff on the other side of the board has advantages and disadvantages, but however you do it a shrink in board size will rock. You will no longer need a full tower case to get a bunch of drives in. Mid tower cases will be able to hold as many drives as full towers do now if you shrink the board.
As for cooling, look at other small computers, like console systems. Especially the GameCube. It has one fant blowing air in on one side, out on the other. Because of it's small size, it becomes easier to cool, not harder. You have less fans, moving more air.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
It's not specifically about a small footprint. It's about improving the usability of the hardware.
;) So how can we improve hardware usability for people who work inside and expand their systems.
Apple improves usability by making it "just work" out of the box for 90% of computer users. But obviously Slashdot power-users are in the other 10%
DeviceBay was a spec for hard drives and other components that would slide in and out of the chassis, and connect using FireWire or USB (so you could swap things on-the-fly). It was mostly for rack-mounter server farms, but would have made everyone's life easier. Unfortunately, it never went anywhere.
Back in the early 90s Apple and a few design firms were playing with ideas for a computer that looked like a rail, or a backplane. Components, cards, drives, were hung on the rail or slotted into the backplane.
Manufacturers (besides Apple) don't really seem to care about the usability of the box, though. If they did they would have ripped off the PowerMac G4's side door well and pronto (Dell's attempt at it can most charitably be described as "half-assed").
Isn't it about time we had a single, standard connector for all the LED's in the case.. and the power switch.. and the reset switch. .and the suspend/sleep/hibernate switch.. etc etc
:/ gah..
rather than the huge jumble of cables.. the connectors on which usually don't fit the motherboard pins for them anyway
This will be possible as soon as drive manufacturers get around to building hard drives and the like with a native (or at least semi-native) FireWire (aka IEEE1394) interface. Most FireWire cards I have seen have that mystery internal connector. FireWire might even provide enough power to power the drive itself. How does daisy-chaining internal drives with one cable sound?
I haven't read much into Serial ATA, but that sounds promising also.
SIGFEH
As far as I can see this is a fact that the rest of the PC industry has never caught onto properly. If you sensibly match all the components in a machine then most users will never need or want to change a thing.
This is different to the /. crowd who want to do this all the time but we are hardly a random sample are we.
Kelv!
This one's easy, although it's not really the form factor of the case.
Why don't laptop manufacturers include wireless mice? Almost everyone hates trackpads, eraser heads, etc. when compared with real, scrollable, optimal mice.
Yes, I know that wireless mice exist, but why not put the receiver *inside* the laptop itself. So a little mouse is the only extra part outside of the case.
You might say the people would lose them, but then again, manufacturers could make a killing with replacements for dumb users who can't keep track of their mice.
Expandability is highly overrated. At work, where I'm a "power user", the only "expansion" of eight PCs in the last six years was extra memory.
In all other cases by the time I need a bigger hard drive, I also need a faster CPU, more memory and a better monitor.
At home, where the usage is less demanding (web surfing), I upgraded modems twice, replaced one hard drive, and added memory. This is of seven computers I had.
All in all, IMHO expandability is something that the average user does not need (beyond swapping components), and the advanced user thinks will need but doesn't either (a few devoted hackers excepted).
hmmm, a major pain in the ass?..... why not just fold the motherboard in half? sure you'd probably have a 1/8 inch gap between the 2 sides, but you would barely have to change a single thing about the design, just point the pci slots in a different direction
(since when did good engineers complain about things being a "major pain in the ass"?)
May you be touched by His Noodly Appendage. RAmen.
What is it about the slashdot crowd that wants everything at the cost of nothing. Maybe they get it from using Linux far too long. You can either get efficiency or you can get scalability with a very small range between the two. For efficiency look at gaming consoles, they sacrifice the ability to scale in order to have a tight nit efficient system. Another entrant into this catagory is/was Cyrix's Media GX chip and Intel's 810 chipset. The cost and waste of the system is lowered by putting more components in the same packaging. On the side of scalability look at the Mac 9600 with it's 12 memory sockets and 6 PCI slots. Of course just about any PC or workstation class system falls into the scalable classification, the 9600 is just an example of sheer expandibility. The marrige of these two is something like the G4 Cube which is hated in many circles. It was small and fairly efficient yet had the ability to be upgraded a little bit. However it came at the cost of not being able to use widely abvailable standard sized expansion card (a video card upgrade costs beaucoup cash because you can only get it from Apple). Slashdot folks want something that can fit a half dozen components into off the shelf yet be compact and efficient. It isn't going to happen unless somebody releases a system with a "computer on a chip" plugs directly into a backplane that links it to other components. Even then people would bitch because the COC components weren't up to their expectations.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
The problem is NLX stuff is rare, outdated, and expensive. It didn't catch on. I've a NEC machine with an NLX design sitting next to me. Nice in theory, and quite a clean design. But upgrades are not possible at all.
No sig is worth reading.
Remove one screw and it slides out of the side, easily replaced or swapped.
...or DROPPED!
I've seen a Dell hard disk destroyed in exactly this way. Granted, the owner should have noticed the screw missing, but still, I'd say Dell is mostly to blame for having the hard disk held in by a single, tiny screw.
I'll take a Powerbook any day:
- Batteries and CDROM are securely held in their compartments by a spring-loaded latch. It's almost impossible to accidentally unlatch them, and if you do, who cares, it's just the battery.
- The hard disk, memory, and 802.11 card are stowed safely underneath the keyboard. It takes about two seconds to flip down the keyboard, 20 seconds to install an Airport card, five minutes to install memory, and five minutes to swap the HD.
- *much* sleeker/thinner styling than the Dells, whether Titanium or Bronze.
Vaios are my favorite PC laptop, but that's not saying much. I can't stand the keyboards on the Vaios. Why does nearly every PC latop maker think they're doing us a favor by putting the arrow keys where the shift key ought to be?
I revive old PC's for charities and churches and such, and have done my share of component swapping, building 3 good PC's from 5 dead ones, etc.
:(
Talk all you want about sexy stuff like sliding rails and things like that, all I want is a standard on screw sizes.
The last PC case I opened had 4 (count 'em, FOUR) different types of screws all doing the same job. One size kept the cards in place, one size kept the hard drives in place, one size kept the floppy in place and one size kept the cover on. All the same length, all the same head type (thank God) but different gauges and thread types. They look amazing similar in a pile on the desk, however...
And there is a special place in Hell for the guy that insists on putting slot-head screws in ANYTHING.
You want small and yet still expandable?
The do the expansion externally. Sun did this with many of their systems -- you can't fit too much into a pizza box, after all -- and the SCSI bus was convenient. The IPX(?) and its peripherals were nicely stackable, but the user could rearrange 'em as they saw fit.
Personally, I'd find it more important to make the systems _quiet_. I don't need, or want, loud fans. Leave the fancy cooling to the overclockers...
(Which brings up an interesting viewpoint -- if we exclude the fancy cooling, and ran systems ONLY at speeds that could be cooled by nothing more than passive heat-sinks, what would the 'average' clock-speeds be?)
These days the fast-data bus of choice seems to be Firewire. So it seems sensible that any expansion to the system should be done via external boxes and firewire...and, indeed, this is what apple appears to be doing.
After all, it makes sense. You can better tune the power requirements (why do you need a 350W P/S in a PC? Because you *might* added a bunch of hard-drives and suchlike. Far more sensible to add power capacity as you add components, isn't it?), too. You can configure the system how you like (so long as the component cases are well-designed as well)...