Blah. Sorry: http://www.apple.com/macmini/specs.html
How about a little ARM9-based card that consumes about half a watt:
http://www.embeddedarm.com/products/board-detail.php?product=TS-7260
or
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS2304885763.html
all comes with USB, ethernet etc. Jeff, you’ll have to dump windows and start learning how to code small, fast, efficient Linux code instead. You might be surprised how good it is.
I just picked up a Fit-PC which uses the AMD Geode and what might be the same board illustrated above. I found it at http://www.fit-pc.com/new/ for US $300+shipping. It’s a complete system running within that 5W power threshold, with I think a 60GB notebook drive, 256MB RAM, video + audio + 2 USB + 2 Ethernet, comes with Ubuntu 7.10 and Gentoo Linux pre-loaded, perfectly silent. It actually runs X/Gnome tolerably, to my surprise, though it’s unsurprisingly a bit sluggish as a desktop.
I’m planning to load some different software (FreeBSD or NetBSD) and use it as a bridging firewall; the 2 Ethernet ports are perfect for that.
Sorry to the MAC mini fans just above, but this thing is $300 and consumes 5W running fully loaded; that’s half the price and 1/6 the power of a mini. I think that’s worth noting. The mini has definite virtues but they’re different.
By the way, that Alex post above sure smells like spam to me; at the very least, the wording is strongly reminiscent of a lot of email spam I get about outsourcing and the domain name seems awfully like a lot of spam-style obfuscated domains.
I’ve used VIA EPIA motherboard to build dual-tuner DVR box running Linux and VDR. It doesn’t have very powerful processor, but there’s hardware MPEG2 decoder which takes almost all load.
As many mentioned before I’d slap in a bunch of NICs and build a cheapo router/firewall (pfSense!) … or connect an hard disk and have a NAS (www.freenas.org anyone?)
@krog/Norhtec
The Norhtec Ultra Client comes with a power supply.
I am using mine as a gateway.
The only time that it is rebooted is to apply OS/AV patches.
It is very quiet as it’s fanless - uses the case as a heat sink.
http://www.norhtec.com/
Add 512mb of ram, a mini-pci 802.11b card, a decent sized hard drive, and a touch screen, and you have an excellent car stereo system. Running a stripped-down version of Win2k or XP, and a simplified skin on top of foobar2000 (or Linux/X/some tiny window manager/some tiny skinnable player, if you’re a masochist). If the audio quality is too low, add a Creative SB X-Fi USB external audio card. If you really want to play CD’s, add a low profile slot-load cd drive. Should wind up costing around the same as a decent audio deck, but you get to take your whole MP3 collection with you.
Still I’m waiting to get my hands on Terminator CPU taken from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s head. With that I could do some serious mobile computing.
Being actually the brain of a Conservative, it may not be all that green, but just think of the embedded applications!
I gotta say the new MSI mini-ITX Montevina based system looks like a winner:
This from the mini-itx.com website.
MS-9818 Specifications
* Supported processors: 45nm Socket P Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo/Celeron processors
* FSB: 1066/800/667 MHz
* Chipset: Intel GM45 North Bridge;Intel ICH9M-E South Bridge (with integrated TPM)
* Memory: 2x DDR2 800/667MHz SO-DIMM (up to 4GB max RAM)
* Graphics: Intel GMA X4500 Graphics with DirectX 10 support
* Display Outputs: VGA, DVI-D, HDMI, LVDS
* Audio: Realtek ALC888 5.1 Channel HD Audio; 6W Class-D Amplifier
* LAN: 2x Gigabit LAN ports (82567LM 82574L)
* Storage:4x SATA II with RAID 0/1/5/10; 1x 44pin IDE
* Peripheral Connectivity: 4x USB 2.0 ports + 4x additional USB 2.0 headers; 1x RS-232/RS-422/RS-485 + 5x additional COM headers
* Expansion: 1x PCI; 1x Mini PCIe; 1x PCIe x1; 1x Compact Flash (underneath board)
I think even with the somewhat slow X4500 graphics this would do just fine as a Vista Media Center PC. Better probably than the AMD 780G based platform because of power consumption. Maybe the X4500 is not as good a GPU but good enough.
Thank you for talking about the CherryPal C100. I am linking to this page from my blog, CherryPal for Everyone, at cherrypal dot blogspot dot com. I am excited about how the CherryPal can bridge barriers to people who have not had access to computers or the internet because of money, fear, education or other challenges. I will be commenting on my experience of using it on my blog as soon as I get my own CherryPal C100! You can use CODE CPP206 to get your own CherryPal for $10 less than purchase price at Paypal http://cherrypal.blogspot.com
hmm so your happy to talk about
Building Tiny, Ultra Low Power PCs
In previous posts, I’ve talked about building your own desktop PC, and building your own home theater PC.
a long as its not PPC SOC based as per my fully informed post that got deleted?, that says a lot about your motives here.
your also very happy to advocate the beagleboard (a href=http://beagleboard.orghttp://beagleboard.org/a) but dont want people to know about the Efika
even though the cherypal is exactly the same board but without the x86 emulation firmware (so as to be able to use any generic PCI x86 cards) that genesi made and have put on all their boards over the years…
the beagleboard (a href=http://beagleboard.orghttp://beagleboard.org/a) which is $149 and includes a somewhat beefier processor. However, you would have trouble making it yourself…”
you cant be seriously advocting the BB , when for an extra $50 you can get a fully made developer dual core 400Mhz Genesi development board of a MPC5123 PPC system reference design at $199, cheaper than the cherryPC by all acounts, and with an intigrated gfx chipset included.
User-programmable 32-bit RISC multimedia core operating at up to 200 MHz
Integrated display controller supporting up to 720p (1280720) and WXGA (1366768) resolution
a href=http://www.genesi-usa.com/press.php?date=20080414http://www.genesi-usa.com/press.php?date=20080414/a
“Freescale dual-core processor simplifies embedded Linux OS-based design
Power Architecture™ processor, backed by mobileGT Linux starter kit, designed to reduce cost and time-to-market for industrial applications ”
“The MPC5123, a next-generation successor to the popular MPC5200 processor, combines a Power Architecture e300 core scaling to 400 MHz with an advanced multimedia co-processor to deliver exceptional processor performance. ”
The cheapest solution nowadays is of course to buy a EeePC 700. WLAN, Ethernet, 3xUSB, low power with internal UPS (the battery) makes this the ideal low-cost server. Linux comes pre-installed, installing the LAMP stack is easy. Also you don’t need an external keyboard or monitor for maintenance tasks.
Have you guys heard about the Stinger Small Form Factor PC?
http://www.colmek.com/stinger-small-form-factor-pc.html
I have been hearing a lot about it and have been wondering whether to evaluate one before buying several of them.
Meis, If you read the follow up articles on Toms, they have tested some SSD’s with lower MAX power than average notebood HD idle power. And they are FAST!
I have not seen any power efficiency benchmarks specifically on CF cards when used as boot devices–modern SSD benchmarks are probably not directly correlative to CF performance.
Here is a question: If a CF card has wear protection is it suitable as a boot device? Do CF cards have an underserved bad rep as boot devices because early ones had no wear protection?
What about Samsung’s Q1? My boss has two and loves 'em. Heck, I’ve played around with them, and–apart from the elevator-music default screensaver-- they’re pretty wicked.
Wow! Quite impressed!
I have 2 linksys nlsu2 devices (aka Slug - http://www.nslu2-linux.org) that I’m using mainly for file sharing, ssh remote access, webcam streaming … I’m using linux debian on both of my slugs and I’m quite happy. Since nslu2 will go away soon (production will be stopped) I was trying to find a replacement and just found it here!
Also I’m building a robot from an old PC and this nano-itx is perfect for my next robot project!
Will this be available in Europe or only for US? Can anyone please advise where to buy this excellent hardware! Thanks.