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

[Steve Bjork]

Frank,

Zotac make a great line of motherboards, like the small and low power 
ION-ITX based single board computer.  It's based on the Atom CPU (Intel 
Pentium based) with a NVIDIA's graphic chipset so you can do full screen 
video.  Very powerful system and that can run Windows and Linux but yet 
ITX small size board.

Try this link for a complete (With Wi-Fi) ION board:
http://www.zotac.com/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=100002&lang=en

Note: this was the board that I was looking at for the CoCo 4 project. 
It's small and can fit inside a CoCo 3 case.

If you are looking for a complete solution (One that you don't have to 
build) than try one of there Mini-PC that based on the ION system.  
These computers are about the size of external hard drive.  Just hook up 
a keyboard, mouse, network and monitor and you are ready to go.

Here is the link: 
http://www.zotac.com/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=100033&lang=en

While it's true the price is not just $10 for the computer, they are 
about the lowest price new computers with a small form factor.

Something else to think about is the cost of power for running a 
computer all the time. (Well, that is what you do with a server.)  The 
old and cheap computers that you are looking at will cost you more than 
a new ION based computer in just a year or two because of how much power 
the old computers waste.  I replaced my old server that was costing me 
$25 per month in power with a new one that now used about $5 of power.  
The new server will pay for its self in just 3 years.  And that's a full 
server with 4 TB (2 TB mirrored system) and auto-backup to the internet 
via S-3.

Steve

Frank Swygert wrote:
> This is the biggest and best group of hardware hackers I know and trust!
> I ran across this on e-bay for cheap:
> http://cgi.ebay.com/TORONTO-SINGLE-BOARD-COMPUTER-PCB-371-01-A3-PENTIUM_W0QQitemZ150395576904QQcmdZViewItemQQptZMotherboards?hash=item2304466248 
>
>
> It appears to be a Pentium computer with everything on an old long AT 
> card (looks like one of the expanded slots... maybe PS/2... I forget 
> what the others were called now!). Obviously has a monitor connector. 
> This is a Pentium cars, so I would assume a standard VGA monitor would 
> work. The only thing missing is a keyboard and mouse connector, which 
> might be on one of the headers.
>
> Of course one of these would be better/easier to use...
> http://cgi.ebay.com/K62093-LOT-2-Socket-PGA370-Single-Board-Computer_W0QQitemZ290379841481QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item439bfcbfc9 
>
> http://cgi.ebay.com/K62092-LOT-4-Socket-PGA370-Single-Board-Computer_W0QQitemZ290379841469QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item439bfcbfbd 
>
>