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Re: SBC vs hacked subnotebook

From: Doug Sutherland <>
Date: Fri, 2 Feb 2001 08:14:04 -0500

Hey Marcus, on behalf of me and my jacket, we'd both like to apologize 
for not responding to your emails of late. I have basically been out 
of the picture for a while and ALL of my plans have been on hold for 
the past two months. But I want to say that jAugment is looking really 
good, and I am quite impressed with all of the new functionality that 
you have added recently. I know you are anxious to try jAugment-ing
some of my lower level code, trust me my friend we will get there. I 
plan to "go to town" with jAugment very soon. You must be patient 
grashopper (ever seen the 'kung fu' series?). When you can grab the 
stone out of my hand (from across the pond via augmented reality) 
before it closes (via stepper motors) you will be ready for your next 
lesson. <grin>

> I wonder: Has anybody in this list ever thougth about not using 
> an SBC but to hack an all-in-one subnotebook?

There has been lots of talk about it and several people are doing 
that, others are using PDAs and PocketPCs. At at one point Brian at  
extreme computing had a kit for sale based on a ricoh magio. The  
specs are still there http://www.extremecomputing.com/borgkit1.html

Brian also wrote up a guide that includes some info on this
http://www.extremecomputing.com/gettingstarted1.html

> If you remove display and keyboard these things should be pretty small.

I have a palmax PD-1000, bought it on ebay for $500 and it came with 
expansion port plus FDD and CD-ROM, 166Mhz MediaGX with 32MB RAM, has
audio and single PCMCIA slot. It uses standard 2.5" HDDs up to 9.5mm 
and RAM is expandable to 64MB. Yes it would be small if I removed the 
display, and it could make a nice wearable. The connectors for the 
LCD display seems to have oome loose, and the display goes on and 
off intermittently. It's ripe for dissection and wearable. Wanna 
take it off my hands? 

> how does a MediaGX/Dragonball/... compare to current uBGA-prcessors?

They are all in completely different ballparks. MediaGX is high end 
pentium up to 2-300Mhz with A/V on the CPU via emulation (with the 
help of companion ships). Dragonball is a microcontroller with MMU
that runs a stripped down linux at much lower clock speeds. By uBGA
I assume you're talking about MachZ and the likes, they are somewhere
in between, probably equivalent to a 486 in power, usually running 
at adjustable speeds from 33 to 133 Mhz.

  -- Doug

------------------------------------------------------------
  Grow your own Wearables: http://wearables.los-gatos.net
 What I'd like is to have you call me and my jacket answers
------------------------------------------------------------

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