Intro & Faq Options

[zeigerpuppy]

One vote for CF,
it's great to have the peripherals it allows, ie: ethernet/wifi/bluetooth/audio adapter etc.

[Da_Blitz]

actually i am pushing for ethier ethernet on board or move everything to usb2.0

wifi and bluetooth should be built in and i havent seen a cf audio. usb does it fine and then i dont have to worry about driver issues that we get on these boards all the time about new cf cards

the other thing is how much space it takes up

[adf]

been skipping posts--just read the last two.

imho--USB 2 & cf would both be useful. don't sweat on board ethernet, a usb port is more adaptable. keep a cf slot. the tech is driven by cameras and is likely to continue improving without weird drm-ish crap happening to it.

my quite possibly irrelevant .02usd

[Ragnorok]

- I think if CF is in it should be external, particularly if ethernet won't be on-board. I don't like using USB as my "network" connection. It's okay for peripherals, but for actual networking I vastly prefer ethernet over USB and some kludge to make it look like a NIC, that only works on the one computer it's running on. Ikky. I'd much rather plug into my network like a real computer, when I'm on the wire.
- I like the micro-SD idea for the OS, with miminum internal flash, and I really like stampsm's idea of using a "break-out" ribbon cable for development. I'd still like to keep at least one, and without CF more than one, full-sized SD slot.
- Biometrics are a nice-to-have, but not necessary, imho. I'd rather type in a password and have Raid-on-SD than have a bio scanner, or even a camera.

[speculatrix]

there is a CF audio card, discussed in another forum, but it's designed for high-end. A more generic twin-channel analogue I/O system which could be pressed into service as an oscilloscope would be nice - use at 44 or 48kHz, 16 bit * 2 and it's an audio capture/playback system, use at 1MHz, 8 bit, it's a simple 'scope.

[Da_Blitz]

well there are always usb to ethernet adaptors, and with a usb hub you could have 4

haha RAID on SD, sounds good still in 2 minds about the finger print reader, it dosent really bring any security to the device like the smartcard does. but at the moment its out as i cant find a supplier

only reason i like it is because even on my Z i used very long passwords (23 chars or more) and its a pain to type.

there will be a slot for a CF card but i am tempted to make it cf on ata rather than apure CF card so that if you wanted a larger model and you had room then you could attach an ipod drive to the thing. i need to work out the space allocation first

[cal]

How thin can this hardware be made? The thickness of my Z has always been the thing that bugs me the most. A clamshell device that is long, narrow and thin, would have a big enough screen and keyboard for normal use, and still fit in a jacket or back pocket.

[Da_Blitz]

well it wont be "razar" thin, i hate that type of desgin, in fact i felt the Z was a good thickness

at the moment with the case design i have in mind it would be as thick as the keyboard part of the c3000 with the keyboard indented (grips on sides of keyboards)

anyway you can chose which case you want, but you might have to use a smaller battery

[LordVan]

I want one of those (even if it's not in a case to start with as i like to fiddle with new gadgets (and maybe do some kernel hacking - since i don't have any of the tools (oszilloscope, logic analyzer,..) to do anything on the hardware myself really.

will there be a possibility of getting one (with or without case) early on to do testing and stuff?

[Da_Blitz]

yeah there is actually, it will be beta but basically i will have the plans on the internat as well as where to order the board from, you send them the design and they send you a populated board

for the dev model not everything has to be soldered on, there is also the posability of a cheap dev board that is nothing but RAM and the CPU (image is downloaded over a parrelel port jtag cabel or usb aand exectues a linux kernel with ramdisk from there for testing, great idea for a cluster of these (my compile farm in the futre))

[Ragnorok]

- Your OpenPDA link says "FORBIDDEN" on April 5, Da_Blitz. I presume any data on getting a dev system together will appear there?
- I'd prefer an Ethernet port. My experience is that "networking" with USB does little more than complicate an incredibly simple and reliable system. "Progress", I guess...

[Da_Blitz]

i dont think a full sized ethernet port is a good size for this thing

i know it sasys forbidden,im still trying to get the site set up, dont want to use apache or any form of dynamic page generation where posible however i will have to make an exception for the wiki and webmail but i might move that to another host

i have the basis for a webpage generation system that uses make to build the entire site when somthing is updated, i have my resons for staying static.

as for the power supply, reson its not up is its really a monolithic chip rather than several seperate chips so there is no real point in putting it up

[Ragnorok]

- Unfortunate, the poor Ethernet. It's no larger than USB A, but that's a lot of area compared to mini-A, I guess. (sniffle) I was so hoping to have real networking. USB networking is "real" about like Winbloze is a "real" OS.

[speculatrix]

i dont think a full sized ethernet port is a good size for this thing

I think that a regular cat5 ether 10/100(/1000 would be nice) is essential. I would rather than one less USB socket if needed to make room.

[Da_Blitz]

actually you might want to know there is an actual product called "winbloze", it was an excellent parody of windows and its users about 7 years age if my mem dosent need to be fsck'd

the one advantage of usb ethernet is it can be faster than ethernet, however YMMV

it has USB host so why not stick a gigabit USB2.0 ethernet adaptor in the port