Hi all, I've been lurking this list for over a year now, waiting for the inspiration to strike, and I've finally started making concrete plans for my wearable. I wanted to run it by you all, to see how it sounds, before I start on it. Basically, what I want out of the system is a combination of all of the things I get out of my laptop, desktop, PDA, and MP3 player, with some additional functionality that's currently impractical for me (like reading & composing email while walking down the street). To meet these needs, I've decided that I want a portable system, carried either in a small briefcase or backpack, with a twiddler & headphones as minimal I/O, and the option of attaching an LCD & keyboard, when possible. The system will accept power either from an AC adapter, or a battery pack. I've found the EPIA 5000 motherboard, with 533Mhz Eden CPU to be suitable ( http://www.viavpsd.com/product/epia_mini_itx_spec.jsp?motherboardId=2 ). It's quite small, and has great power consumption for an x86 system. There's also some great PSUs available, at reasonable prices (like this one http://store.ituner.com/ituner/miniitxpower.html ), that I can use to power the system from an AC adapter, a battery, or an automobile cigarette lighter. For the battery, I'll be using 2 sets of 10 series wired NiMH "C" cells (1.2v, 4000mAh), in a parallel circuit, for a total output of 12v & 8Ah. Given the 14W consumption that's been mentioned on this list, I should be able to power the unit for almost 7 hours. Obviously, it will be a lot less if I'm actually doing anything with it, as various perpherals and drives will be consuming significant amounts of power, but I feel confident that this will give me enough power to do things like listening to & composing email through headphones & twiddler with emacspeak, for a few hours, or so. I should be able to add a laptop hard drive, slimline CD or DVD drive, and IDE CF drive. I'll probably attempt to use only the CF drive, when running off of battery power. Looking at the system as a whole, it's basically a cross between a laptop, and a "luggable" system from the 1985, but it has the tremendous advantage of being upgradeable & repairable using off-the-shelf parts, and wide open to me, to do whatever the heck I want to it. Any thoughts or advice? The only challenging part of this projects, that I can see, are getting the battery power right, and heat (I'll probably need to put at least one fan in, although I'd like to avoid it, if at all possible). -ben -- http: slightlymad.net smtp:AIM: bsarsgard ICQ: 42506676 (unreliable) -- Subscription/unsubscription/info requests: send e-mail with subject of "subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "info" to
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