I'm shopping for a solution right now. I had several ideas both discussed on this thread: Using an old notebook and an ARM based appliance re-flashed to run Linux but neither would work well. So I'm buying this tiny new motherboard from Intel with an Atom CPU on it. Sells for $70 with the soldered down CPU chip. It is about 6.5 inches square and uses so little power that there is no fan on the CPU heat sink.
This computer will run an NTP server and therefor needs a "real" serial port for the 1PPS signal from the GPS (USB will not work) I do't need much else. The server does nt need a CDROM or even a hard drive. It can run on a RAM disk and boot off a USB memory stick. It does not need a monitor or keyboard either. When you add it all up this machine will cost about $100 and burn only 1/4 the power of the old 200Mhz notebook PC. Intel's "Atom" is very good with power. ARM uses even less power but I could not figure out how to get the 1PPS signal to NTPd in any of the ARM platforms I have plans to also connect a WWV receiver to the same computer and decode WWV's time code. This means a fair bit of processing and an audio interface. THat is one way to solve the "how to interface you project to a computer" -- you put the computer inside your project. A $70 and 6.5 inch square motherborad makes that a reasonable plan. - ===== Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
