12 volts DC at 1 amp runs a NetWinder. It looks very much like a
progressive set-top box (NTSC video I/O, 10BASET port, 10/100BASET port,
phone I/O and handset jacks, built-in speaker, volume slider, microphone,
IRDA port, VGA out, stereo audio I/O, serial port, parallel port, keyboard,
mouse). 9" x 6" x 2", quiet, little waste heat. Very cute. Uses a
standard 2.5", 12.5 mm IDE disk drive. The one on my desktop has an 810MB
drive, but Toshiba's just released a nice 6.1GB drive for less than $500.
As is, this thing will make a mean little wearable. All for $675!
Inside, there's a byzantine hierarchy of mother, daughter, and
grand-daughter boards, with surprisingly little green wire to patch
everything together. You have to wonder how much the SA110 eval board and
the Digital Network ARM Reference Design (DNARD) influenced this box.
As for how it runs Linux -- Corel seems to still be working on the drivers,
so their X server leaves bits here and there on the screen, and we don't yet
have support for the NTSC video I/O. But the installation is trivial: pull
the wall wart and the NetWinder out of the box, plug them together, add
monitor, keyboard, and mouse, power on, and it starts booting into Linux,
all in (literally) a minute. Other than the beta driver issues, it feels
like a P266 with twice as much memory.
In short, this machine KICKS ASS.
-Rehmi
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