[Coco] Single board Pentium computer... "CoCo4" or Drivewire server material?

[Frank Swygert]

I took a look at some of the videos on YouTube. Looks like it would definitely work! Stick one in a CoCo case, replacing the CoCo motherboard, using a mini USB keyboard and you'd have a real powerful computer. You'd have to use the MESS based emulator though, as the DOS based one doesn't support USB, and the Beagle doesn't have enough power for Windows. But would it run in 128MB? The 256MB of Flash is nice... would be especially wonderful if the OS/emulator software would all fit, freeing the SD slot for storage only (and maybe OS-9). I see that it has S-video as well as DVI, which might be a better approach for some. Cost is a bit more than those little single board computers (not the backplane, the others... I was a bit intrigued by the backplane due to extremely low price). 

As far as a new device goes, a Mini ITX with Atom or VIA processor is probably the best way to go, several out there for around $100 (such as this one for $76.95, http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=BOXD945GCLF2D-DT&cpc=SCH). Still have to add RAM, but 2GB of DDR-2 (max it supports) is under $50. So for $under $130 you have much more power and flexibility than the Beagle. At 6.7" square and quite a bit taller it won't fit in a CoCo case though! For a "CoCo4" any number of small ITX cases would be great. 

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Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 20:59:04 -0500
From: jdaggett at gate.net

Frank:

have you ever considered a Beagle Board? It uses a 600 MHz Arm Cortex A8 processor and 
a version of Ubuntu has been ported to it. Even Symbian OS is now avaialble for it. It has DVI 
output. Stereo input/output, MMC/SD card interface, I2C, I2S, SPI, 256MB nand flash, 
128MB LPDDR Ram and some more. All for $149. The board size is 3 inch square. 

www.beagleboard.org

-- 
Frank Swygert
Publisher, "American Motors Cars" 
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