Starship Asterisk*

The IPCs we were using from CyberResearch seem to now be made with bad power supplies. Three have burned out in the past few months, one right in the lab at room temperature.

We are looking for very small footprint PCs to take its place. Probably Industrial PCs (IPCs) are the best. Here is one I just found, the IB1575 from NEXCOM:
http://webserver.nexcom.com.tw/0330/nex ... t=prodspec

Any thoughts? Lior -- I don't remember the exact dimensions the PC must fit into for a CONCAM3 box. Does this one fit?

- RJN

There are now a bunch of new "hand tops" that have extremely small footprints that might be of use. Here is a list with a comparison chart: http://www.handtops.com/show/compare . Outside of this, Dell seems to have a new line including the Axim X50v which is really small and is listed as having the following capabilities:

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http://www1.us.dell.com/content/product ... l=en&s=dhs

Microsoft® Windows MobileTM 2003 Second Edition operating system with Windows Media Player 10 Mobile

Powered by the Intel® XScaleTM PXA270 Processor at 624MHz
Brilliant 3.7" color TFT VGA display with 640x480 resolution

Integrated Intel® 2700G multimedia accelerator with 16MB video memory

Integrated 802.11b and BluetoothTM Wireless Technologies

Packed with 64MB SDRAM and 128MB Intel StrataFlash® ROM

Integrated CompactFlash Type II and Secure Digital / SDIO Now! / MMC card slots provide flexible expansion

VGA-Out Support with optional VGA Presentation Bundle

Removable Primary Battery with optional High Capacity Battery

3.5mm Headphone / Headset Jack for Headsets to support VoIP and voice recognition applications

Built-in microphone and speaker for easy recording on the go

USB Cradle including Battery Charging Slot

Sleek, stylish design

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Now much of this is irrelevent for field NSL computers but the processor is designed to use as little power as possible which should also mean it runs cool relative to Pentium (etc.) desktop processors. It appears to have enough memory to store everything necessary but can it run Linux? Also, it does not appear to have a USB port except in the cradle -- so how big is the cradle? Possibly the 802.11b wireless can be used to talk to a computer that DOES have a USB port. At $449. the price is below that of the Industrial PCs we currently use from CyberResearth. Other hand tops appear much more expensive, though, sometimes as much as $4000.

Anyone have any experience with one of these? Any thoughts?

- RJN

We have used a couple of small "book" PCs from iDOTpc.com here, the ITX format is nice, and the via motherboards seem pretty good though the fanless version with the crusoe chip is pretty slow. However, they ran redhat out of the box, and happily drive an sbig camera.
Their newer "pro" model
http://www.idotpc.com/TheStore/Desktop/ ... Cate.id=19
can hold up to a 1.2G processor, onboard ethernet, usb, parallel/serial port, and graphics. The price looks pretty decent as well...

mfw

Thanks, mfw -- very interesting! I was not aware of those. Previously, we were only interested in PCs with a longest dimension less than about 10" or so, and all the idotpc's are larger. I'd have to check the exact number.

But we are redesigning the insides of our CONCAM3 (making them "CONCAM3B"s) based on a new SBIG camera (the old one is not made anymore) and a new lens (greater through-put) and so I will have to check on what the new limitations will be. Perhaps we will be able to fit and idot into our new box -- they are very inexpensive! I am not familiar with their processor, though -- all the idotpc's seem to have a VIA C3 E-Series Processor. For example, I don't know how hot it runs or there are likely compatibility issues.

- RJN