On Sat, 2003-03-29 at 23:09, Michael_Bishop/FARRINCS/[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Here is an interesting article about ITX mainboards with the capability for > "Disk on Chip". Seems like you could have a very small computer with > built-in Linux. > > http://www6.tomshardware.com/mainboard/20030326/index.html
Today you can buy IDE flash disks. They are tiny devices that plug into your IDE slot like a IDE cable, and the computer thinks it is a IDE hard drive. It should work with ANY computer with an IDE controller. They are very slow compared to hard drives and you will eventually kill the disk by writing it too much (millions of times now days?) so they are not very useful for normal computers, but for smaller embedded devices like media players or POS (cash registers) they are a pretty good idea. Without a spinning hard drive you can increase reliability because the only moving parts in your computer are the fans. I originally considered IDE flash disks to boot LTSP thin clients for our Linux in Schools projects, but even the smallest disks make this far too expensive when you can easily find quality PXE bootable 10/100 NICs for around $20-25 each. IDE flash disks alone are around that price for small capacities (4MB or 8MB). Warren Togami [EMAIL PROTECTED]
