> > Hey! You've re-invented the X-Terminal! NCD would be proud... > > Yeah, it's basically a thin-client built into a standard PC > daughterboard.
Standalone X terminals are very nice because they are quiet. Put the noisy computer in another room and shut the door. Putting a dedicated general purpose CPU on a daughter card just for X11 is probably less than optimal. Instead, get a X2 chip, and if X11 isn't using a CPU it is available for other tasks. Hmmm, if AMD ever puts 11 CPUs on a die this could get very confusing! :-) > I don't know, it'd probably cost more than it's worth (sorry but I'm > pretty clueless about estimating hardware expense), but it was an > interesting thought! :-) You can get a used standalone NCD X terminal pizza box for US$5-10. Add standard monitor, keyboard and mouse. Works great for "desktop" type work. I haven't found a way to shoehorn TV style video into one though. What I'm looking for is a similar box that is fast enough to do video, and can output to either a computer monitor and/or s-video. I've been thinking about what it would take to do that, and do it right, and it does look like a larger project than the PCI card version. I've been thinking about starting a requirements doc for such a box. A significant problem is that the feature list quickly explodes to the point that it is a full blown computer. Which means expense and noise. Question: does anyone have a good feel for how much general purpose CPU such a box would need? Everything I've read says that H.264 needs a massive amount of CPU to decode, even with recent GPUs from ATI/Nvidia. _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
