[geeks] Ideas

[Shawn Wallbridge]

vance at neurotica.com wrote:

>I am going to try my hand at building a silent computer.  I'm taking
>ideas.  I need floating-point, and ethernet or PCI, and I'd like to have
>built-in sound, and a serial console.  The system will not have a floppy,
>CD-ROM, or HDD, and I was thinking of putting it in a 1U rackmount box.
>
>Peace...  Sridhar
>_______________________________________________
>GEEKS:  http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/geeks
>  
>
We built a nearly silent machine for my boss's kitchen. It used the VIA 
C3 processor on a mini itx board (from VIA) it has everything onboard 
(video, sound, lan, serial, video out). The board was around $200 with a 
800MHz processor (I don't know what the FP is like on it). The 800 has a 
small fan on it, which does make a little noise, but the 533 doesn't 
have a fan, so it is silent.

He also went with a 15" NEC flat panel, so it is pretty small and 
compact (it went in a prebuilt cubby-hole for a TV). He used a USB 
wireless NIC and a wireless keyboard and mouse, so it doesn't have any 
cables hanging out. It really is pretty cool.

shawn