Quote:
Originally Posted by Cobbydaler
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these are so called SBC (Single Board Computers)and the one above has been around off the shelf since 2005 or so, they are not very useful to your average users, but they do have their use.
i seem to remember there is a smaller device but cant seem to find the URL right now, i think it was part of the watch or some such!.
the Gumstix motherboards seem more usable in this type of super small format
with their better options and expansion.
http://gumstix.com/platforms.html
however for your average plaything that the average users can afford to play with out the box and still keep the size really small, the Efika with its many OS already fully working,
http://www.pegasosppc.com/software.php
cheap price and super low power requirements,you may have to find your own box to house it in though as there isnt really a
good one made to house it)
http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS6173441864.html
http://efika.de/index_en.html
http://www.genesippc.com/efika.php
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dragon
I still have a mac mini to find a use for yet....  |
---------- Post added at 02:33 ---------- Previous post was at 02:33 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alien
*cough*doorstop*cough*
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dragon
Expensive doorstop  |
hardly a doorstop, your just not thinking the current uses for it through hard enough.
yours is the
1.42 GHz PowerPC G4 processor with AltiVec, 256 MB RAM, and 80 GB hard drive isnt it?.
perfectly good enough to run a PPC linux on, and connect it to your DVI monitor/TV for use as a media center.
although the PPC linux OS distro's dont currently take advantage of the AltiVec, you can have your apps compiled for it to get a great boost in speed.
the apple OS
does have AltiVec optimisations inside it, shame about it being to heavy overall so you loose much of its AltiVec advantage.
the PPC AltiVec unit as a general rule gets at least twice the performance of the equiv x86 MMX* units given the same clockspeeds so its werth compiling/tuning your linux distro and apps to make use of it were they exist.
just one old link as an example
http://www.engadget.com/2005/01/25/h...-media-center/
---------- Post added at 03:02 ---------- Previous post was at 02:35 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by danielf
Which begs the question: What could you do on this device that you could not do from the device you used to SSH (whatever that means) into it? Oh, and why is it important that this thing runs Linux?
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these so called SBC's are made for many reasons, not least to keep power usage as low as possible per unit, and for remote location control to name but two.
its all about perspective, your average PC users wont be playing this these, but many advanced users might look at all the above and find a good use for them.
its not a case of "why is it important that this thing runs Linux", but rather the fact that just about all PC devices will have at least a basic Linux ported to them as a first test, to work out any prototype bugs etc.
as its free of cost and available for just about any device you care to mention, and any new devices get at the very least a workable POC (Proof Of Concept)codebase, even of it never makes it off the workbench, and so not into the public domain.