[rescue] Bigger Iron at Home (was: SNMP, Baby!)

[Joshua Boyd]

On Tue, Nov 11, 2003 at 03:07:00PM -0600, Mike Hebel wrote:

> This is most likely where mini-ATX shines.  (You could use something 
> like a Javastation too but I doubt it would be vast enough for cooking 
> videos.  ;-)  I suspect you'll be able to only reduce the storage of 
> the top cupboard shelf by a small amount with the box custom-mounted to 
> the back of the cabinet.

Mini-ATX isn't that small (especially when properly cased for use in a
kitchen).  However, a small machine driven by a SH3 hooked to an LCD
controller should do nicely, and would be extremely small (could
potentially fit into a deck of cards if done as a two board set with a
68pin connector between them).

Or, just slap a Spartan 3 in there and run some open core (the LEON
sparc core comes to mind).

I wonder if there would be a market for building such systems into such
sizes.  One side would have VGA, serial, ethernet, etc, one side would
have a 50 or more pin connector the hook up to external equipment.  If a
spartan3 was used, I bet the costs could be kept to well under $100 per
unit for materials.  No good idea what manufactoring would cost though. 

But, doing anything based around a Spartan 3 is beyond me at this time.
Call me overly optimistic though, but I'm beginning to get the idea that
given a few months, and a few thousand dollars to get started (don't
know if there is anything cheaper than Protel that would be up to the
job), plus contact info for an affordable assembly house that will do
one offs, and I just might be able to do it. 
 
> Then a small 9" touch screen and a small wireless keyboard and you're 
> all set.

> Josh - by the time you get around to this everything will be wireless 
> cheaply.

That does cross my mind, except for the scale I see, I doubt that
wireless bandwidth is enough.
 
> Even now I would choose to do wireless G on something in a built in 
> space.  It should be more than fast enough to handle what you want it 
> to do.

How much bandwidth can you pump through the G space?  I doubt that
wireless is really good enough here to handle both lots of simultaneous
128kilobyte/s connections, and still leave a lot of space free for other
wireless gadgets and notebooks, etc?  I could be wrong though.  How hard
is it really to install think bundles of Cat6 and multimode fiber to
each room though, since they will need it anyway?