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Mini Board PC
Ellis-D
writes "There's a product out called the 'Mighty
Might'. It's a SBC (Single Board Computer) that is the
size of a hard drive. It has IDE, FDE,IR, VGA, USB,
Parallel, Serial, Keyboard, Mouse, Network and LCD
controllers on board. The models range from a 486-16 to a
200 mhz Pentium. The 133 w/ 64 meg of ram costs about
$850." Bit pricey, but super cute.. maybe if it had wireless
ethernet.
This would be great for setting up webcams all over the place (like I plan to do). I just wish it was significantly cheaper. I couldn't find the prices for the 486 models, but they would be adaquate for what I'd want them for. If I could get one for the price of a desktop setup, then it would be worthwhile.
Probably won't happen for a while tho.
-Restil
There are many such boards on the market,
why is this one such news?
It says it comes bundled with Windows CE though.
I wonder if you can get a discount without it.
I just contacted Versalogic, and they are quoting board-only prices of $650. The board with a K6-2/300 is $850. In contrast, I just bought an Advantech 5682 for about $400, and an OEM K6-2/300 from Bunta.com for $70.
Oh, well. I was hoping to be pissed about the high price I paid.
I think Advantech has a Flash thing which
behaves like an IDE drive. That would get you
more flash.
How about using USB and digital USB speakers?
Advantech's website has some pages with
cut-price refurbished items, including
single-board computers, PCMCIA adaptors, etc.
And the hard disk is not big enough.
From Advantech's main page, you can find a
page of refurbished, low-cost hardware.
All laptop drives that I've seen run on 5V. The new IBM Microfile drives are rumored to be available (well, when they're available) in either 5V or 3.3V versions.
For DC power regulation from batteries, try something easy like a 7805. Three terminals: Neg. Ground, Vin, and Vout. It doesn't get much easier than that.
Dub Dublin
dub@psw.com
Ack, still too expensive. I can do the whole thing with a B/W cam for less than $100 and color for less than $200. High end 486's or low end pentiums are adaquate for the computer. I'm just interested in an embedded application to keep the footprint size small. Right now my best bet is a minitower case or a proprietary case for small footprint.
-Restil
Or you could pick up a copy of an embedded systems magazine like Circuit Cellar Ink and find ads for dozens of such boards.
This is a little bigger than what you describe, but still very compact and has some really nice features - I have two, both run linux. Timeline sells an embedded 486 computer for only $99. It's really an Epson IM-403 cash register computer, but it's completely PC compatible. Hardware is 486sx33, onboard SVGA, one ISA slot, 4(!) serial ports, and a parallel port. It uses pretty much any old laptop hard disk (I've put 1, 3, and 6.4 GB drives in mine at various times) and comes with a little 5-minute UPS to ride out the normal power glitches. YES! It runs Linux. I've been running Caldera 1.1 or 1.2 on one of these since last summer. With a 32 MB SIMM slapped in it, it even runs X and Netscape just fine, and I often browse with it via roadrunner at home. (It's a little slow starting X (a few seconds), but fvwm/afterstep is fine once it's running. I wouldn't try anything really obese like GNOME on it, though - it is a small box. But still, that's impressive when you consider it won't even run Win95 usefully... Dub Dublin dub@psw.com
Because PC/104 try to be (is) exactly what PC are to computers: standards cards that can be assembled like lego.
A good starting point is Wearables Central (http://wearables.blu.org/) with numerous links to ressources.
If you just want to have an idea of the prices, the problem is that numerous vendor don't display their price, so web site hunting is a bit frustrating. A very good page is those of PC/104 page by Kevin Wang, it is worth a dozen hours of search on the WWW. But maybe the prices are outdated by now.
Last time I checked, the "typical" product was a 486 (or AMD 586, glorified 486) at 100-133 Mhz. The Pentium 100/133 were sort of high-end products
I hope that PC/104(+) will become widely commercially successful, so that we start to see the prices dropping, and might have a chance to get fun assembling micro-PCs :-)
Well I tried to post some links, but nothing shows, so I don't know if it was lost. So just in case, here you are: http://reality.sgi.com/kjw_engr /Wearables/pc104.htm, http://wearables.blu.org/hardwear.html , http://www.rtdusa.com/pc104men.htm and www.pc104.org
No, _don't_ use something like the 7805 to run hard drives. They are way to inefficient which makes them run very hot (or not at all).
Look into the small switching regulators from dallas semiconductor. I think digikey sells drop in switching replacements for the 78xx series too.
Hmmm...
You sure could cluster a lot of these puppies together in a small space.
Now all we need is memory that fits into, say, a ZIF socket .
Check out Corel's (or, uh, HCC's) NetWinder RM.
http://www.corelcomputer.com
Only downside: The NetWinder is based on StrongARM, so there's no hardware floating point. No problem at all if your Beowulf is a database machine or web server, not OK if you're trying to build "weapons of mass destruction"...
Link on over to Industrial Control Links' PC-On-A-Stick. Now if only this were a P-III ;-)
Just think of it, you could put together a car that had more processing power than, well.. I guess I can't think of anything right now.
;-)
OO!
Hook it up to side-mounted display panels of some sort -- do all sorts of fun things with graphics
Those things have 10BaseT ports on them, don't they? What do you need monitors/keyboards/mice for?
Would be perfect for those do it yourself Car MP3 Players. Either that or you brag about how small your computer is (that whole "mine's smaller than yours" thing).
asinus sum et eo superbio
asinus sum et eo superbio
in omnibus veritas
Do some poking around the net. I can't remember the company, but there's a place that sells webcams that simply plug right into the ethernet. They're essentially a SBC PC, camera, and embedded OS (Linux maybe?). I seem to remember they were $700 or something like that.
Hard to come by? What makes you think that? Twenty seconds on yahoo and I can find dozens of them...
There are probably a hundred companies that make these, and most are a *LOT* cheaper than this. I've seen systems that size at that power for $400, not $800.
Just do a search in yahoo for embedded PC. You'll find lots of them. Or you can look at some of the links on my autoLinux site at http://www.bangsplat.org/autolinux.
I seem to remember I linked to some there...
I hate to complain.... ok. I love to complain, but that's not the point.
I sent in a link to this company twice! Both times I saw hide nor hair of this being posted.
PCM-5820-E0A1 - This one looks damn cool. 3.5" SBC with audio, vga, 10/100 ethernet, IDE controller, single +5V power requirement, up to 140F so it can work without CPU fan... This sounds like the perfect board to make a portable MP3 player out of, except you need to write a Linux driver for the Cyrix CX 5530 PCI sound interface (I don't think Linux has one yet).
You might also need some power supply circuitry to get the proper power off of batteries and for your hard drive. Anybody know of any laptop sized IDE hard drives that use only 5V instead of 12V? Also, anybody got schematics for a 6V (four 1.5 AA batteries) -> 5V power regulation circuit?
I dunno about the rest of you, but I'm really tired of having to sit at home with my desktop to listen to all my favorite music. And I'm tired of waiting for Diamond/Creative Labs to get their act together and produce a serious portable MP3 player (and no, the Rio is not serious IMHO).
PC?
Onna stick?
-- Arm yourself when the Frog God smiles.
Duh....no text.
Vermifax
Logout
Too bad it doesn't have built in sound or you could convert old boom boxes to MP-3 jukeboxes.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
What a subtle plug for your website. :P
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Portable Linux box :)
A car sized Beowolf
...
any other ideas?
You don't exist. Go away. --SysVinit Halt
There's always the Advantech biscuit pc that the original Empeg was based on. The PCM-586E/L accepts any pentium, k5, k6, or cyrix 6x86 up to 300 mhz and has vga lcd and crt, 10/100mb ethernet, 16 bit sound, serial, parallel, keyboard, IrDA, usb interfaces, 1 pci slot, 1 pc/104 connector, eide, and two 72 pin simm sockets. It's cheaper too, but you still have to buy a cpu, ram, etc..
It's great that equipment like this is still available.
I remember using a similar product back in the mid-80s made by a company called AMPRO (I think). They had a low-power PC-on-a-card system that we used. It had 1MB of RAM, a built-in video controller (sort of a super CGA - whoopee!!), a pair of serial ports, parallel port, and SCSI controller. The card was the same size as a 5-1/4 inch disc drive controller board. With a small case, a 1.2 MB floppy drive, small SCSI drive, the whole thing couldn't have weighed even 10 pounds.
Since it weighed so little and didn't draw much power, I used to use one for data collection onboard small aircraft. The most expensive thing in the whole setup, in terms of cost as well as power consumption, was the SCSI drive (most PCs that used SCSI drives were Macs and the prices were pretty high; I think we spent $600 for a 20MB drive). Still it was pretty cheap compared to the custom data collection equipment we had been using and having nearly 20MB available for data collection was great. (No... while we did have Windows installed (2.11), we did not use it during flight operations -- DOS+assembler all the way!)
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Okay, you can have it, but I'm cuttin me own throat!
But, I think you're misreading their site: it says, "Price reduced up to", not "Price reduced to".
i.e., they've knocked some amount less than or equal to $180 off the regular price of the board. I still want to build my own car MP3 player with something similar, though.
And it's only twice the size.
There is already a site that has what you need. goto http://www.kinetic.org/cd3.html The mp3 player is based on the advantech board, however the site also has the software you need freely available, including a custom version of redhat ( I will attempt to create a custom debian, not a redhat fan), the touch screen drivers for linux, and the sound drivers for the ess sound card builtin to the advantech board. No schematics though, but it does tell you all the hardware you need.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
I believe the Cyrix CX 5530 PCI sound interface
is 100% sound blaster compatible.
I don't know if it's exactly the same chip, but Alan Cox uses the MediaGX sound chip on his desktop and that he uses it to test his sb16 driver.
If that's right, I'm buying!!!!
Actually, it comes without WinCE. You have to specify the right product code.
;)
PCM-5820-E0A1: Cyrix GXM SBC with Processor, Audio, VGA/LCD and Ethernet
PCM-5820CE-10C: Same as PCM-5820-E0A1, but with a 10 MB Compact Flash card with Windows® CE Ver. 2.1
And then buy a FlashCard and mke2fs it!
Just a few minutes ago I found this product..
http://www.versalogic.com/Ds/vsbc6.htm
It has a $180 price tag
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
It's all about small systems.. Like MP3 home/car systems.. These style of computers are hard to come by.. You don't have to worry about back plains and all that.. They also look cooler than the sbcpci cards (doesn't have the egde connector on them).....
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
That's cool!!! But the 3.5" and stuff is faster and has more onboard items.. But the 386 is still cool none-the-less.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
One word "Servers".
Host games, pages, ect... Save alot of space and if you look at my $180 post, it would be cheap too.. Just get a moniter/key/mouse switcher for it and you could fit all your servers on the corner of a desktop!
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
I went there.. No price on there.. Most likely in the $600+ range... The only advantage they have is that there is one pci slot on board and sound...
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
It's linux compatable!!! (Cept the use, ir and one other thing (wasn't important)) But everything else is linux compatable...
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
USE is suppossed to be USB... The other thing was Analog out put..
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
I didn't see any discounts on it.. I think it on flash ram.. The $180 board can be customized by the dealer so you can get discounts.. =>
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
One hell of a game boy!!!!
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
http://www.ampro.com/
They have alot of diffrent configurations of sbc's.. There's have one addition, scsi.. No prices thou.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
What? The have on their website, $180.. You can buy the CPU and memory cheaper than what they are going to sell those to you.. You can also take off feautures to lower the price...
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Never mind, it's just that they make it out to seem that cheap.. They just cut $180 off..
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Yes you can do that.. USB is wonerful and National SC from what I have heard is trying to embedded systems and use usb for devices, also know as modual computers (If I remember correctly). But the downfall for right now is that LiNUX has no support for USB at the moment.. But they might have it in the next couple of months..
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
We need to find all the companies that make biscut computer, from what I take it that is the correct name for these board, and put them up on a page so that we don't have to search all over for our DIY computer projects.. Hmm.. Maybe I should start selling for diffrent companies off my webpage.. Hmm That's a good idea..
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Woo Hoo.. Now I can't make my gremlin worth something!!!
Hmm I think i'm going to name one of my machnes that.. =>
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
You can attach 2 HD's if I remeber correctly.. So 28 gig isn't big enough?
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
You just have to write it up just write.. Trust me..
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Oh like weapontry computers need much processing to run.. 8088...... All I have to say on that subject..
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
So, what I'd really like to do is buy something like this (something that can be the guts of a PC in the size of a 3.5" slot), buy maybe 10 of them and put them into a RAID rack-mount enclosure, and then plug all 10 into a set of SCSI disks and have myself a kick-ass parallel web server.
:)
What I'm wondering is to what degree these units could share devices, for example, could I have a single PCI chain that all these units had ID's on? Of course, I could have just one unit act as the "file server" and have the others mount the disks through it via NFS or something, but that's a lot of overhead, if instead all the units could treat the disk as something "local", and get the speed advantage of that.
I'm thinking something like sharing a PCI chain is probably a hell of a lot easier to support than sharing RAM. But that's OK - I'm happy dealing with this administratively like 10 separate machines, because I'm sure I could write scripts to manage that (e.g. restart the web servers on all 10 simultaneously). All I want is something that looks and acts like 10 rack-mount servers in the space of 1 - if we it can share a PCI chain, so much the better.
Anyone remember Sequent?
Brian
This could work and I would buy one if they were cheaper, but when you can buy a high end laptop for around $1500, why would I pay almost $900 for a low end pentium without the drives, monitor, etc. If you want a machine for a car dash or something similar it is still just cheaper to slice and dice a laptop.
One can buy an Alton M598 MB with K62-300 for about $150 and get 4 channel Sound. Then one can add the PCMCIA adapter. It's just a question of whether you computer is dash mounted or trunk mounted, $700 for the dash mount option makes it a bit less than fun.
"Value" aside, if it had a PCMCIA slot, I might add it to my toys-to-acquire list. Would anyone else?
I've seen those. I'm afraid I'm fixated on the PCMCIA idea though. For instance one could hook a 2.5" HD to the IDE connector and use the PCMCIA hold a 100Mb/s ethercard, and thus load one's MP3s at 3 songs a second.
Oh, what dreams may come.
check this out....
http://www.eg3.com/ulc/indcxsbu.htm
happy hunting....