On Sun, 05 Aug 2007 09:50:11 -0400, "Andy Stewart" <andystewart@comcast.net> said:
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kstratton@fastmail.us wrote:
My understanding is that playing flash movies is still at the alpha stage (gnash project http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash). For that reason alone, I would not give something like that to my mother. Is there a movie playing technology that is stable enough for general purpose consumption?
One negative of the decTOP that is not obvious is that the decTop does not have an integrated network adaptor (based on a web page), instead it comes with a USB to network adaptor. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. I am willing to consider ARM or MIPS boards. decTOP likes: 1) low power usage (if I believe web pages, 8W) 2) standard memory and hard drive interface 3) video interface provided as well as mouse and keyboard 4) low price I still have to do some reading up on the TCP/IP protocol before actually deciding to buy something.
Another thing that I like about the decTOP is that it takes a 12Vdc input. That lends itself very well to ham radio related operations, where most equipment takes 12Vdc (think: car battery). Also, a good percentage of the 8W is to run the hard drive. I can imagine swapping that out for a flash card and saving lots of power, which would be important in some applications.
If it weren't for the $40 shipping, I'd probably have bought one of these by now. Shipping for four of these was $45 (I think), so if three other people are interested, I'll split shipping with you. Just let me know.
Later,
Andy
- -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group (http://www.wlug.org) Chelmsford Linux Meetup Group (http://linux.meetup.com/393) Amateur Radio: KB1OIQ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with SUSE - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
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Even though nobody said to do this, I personally would be careful using the decTOP directly wired to the car battery. I have seen car batteries under charge with 15 volts or more at the terminals. This is outside the range of the ATX power suply standard for the 12V output (+-5%) acording to: http://www.formfactors.org/developer\specs\ATX12V PSDG2.01.pdf. My greatest concern is for the 3.5" hard drive and possibly the DC to DC converter that converts the 12V to a logic level voltages. I was considering managing the power with some kind of script using hdparm to bring the hard drive in and out of sleep, but there are more than a few technical details to be worked out. -- kstratton@fastmail.us