Wapsi Square Forum

AnotherFairportfan wrote:

Even though I have NO idea what I would do with it, I kind of really want one.

Well, what's a bit more than four inches square that you could slip something like that into?

MerchManDan wrote:

AnotherFairportfan wrote:

Even though I have NO idea what I would do with it, I kind of really want one.

Exactly how i feel.

I have been known to buy things strictly for the techno-giggle factor alone.

Back in 1990, i REALLY wanted a Subaru Justy with all-wheel-drive and an ECVT.

AnotherFairportfan wrote:
 
Runs Windows 7/8 and Linux.  

Sounded awsome until

1GB of DDR3 RAM

Windows 7/8 with so little RAM? I think I'll pass.

Eeeeeeyeah that would be an issue.

Wonder if you could expand it a bit.

That's the embedded version of Windows - designed for low-horsepower devices.

Probably not unlike RT.

Besides, they said it also runs Linux, and there are plenty of Linux distros that work just fine with 1GB of RAM. Especially if it's an embedded Linux distro.

Requirements for W7 embedded:

1 GHz x86 or amd64 processor with 900 mhz speed or equivalent
512 MB of system memory (1GB recommended for amd64)
1 GB free space on hard disk drive (HDD) or flash-based Solid State Drive (SSD) (4 GB recommended)
At least one of the following bootable media types:
. Bootable DVD-ROM drive
. Bootable USB 2.0 port and a USB Flash Drive (UFD) with 4 GB of free space, or access to a local network
BIOS Supporting Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE) 3.0

Can't find the requirements for W8 embedded, but probably not too dissimilar

Now, if we could just make a Beowulf cluster of those....

Looks like a very nice competitor for Intel's NUC (Next Unit of Computing) micro-PC/server design. Would make a very effective home-theatre media player (or server, if you add a big outboard USB disk, DVD drive, etc.). The MythTV folks will probably snap these up.

Atomic wrote:Now, if we could just make a Beowulf cluster of those....

In making a cluster it would probably make sense to start with their design (it's open-source) and lay it down in a slightly different hlysical form, to make it "rack-friendly" for mass installation and deployment. Lay out a bunch of these on a single board, delete or no-stuff a bunch of components you don't need for cluster applications (HDMI and audio connectors), improve the power hookup, use a larger, per-board fan with passive air ducts to the processors, add a gig-e switch chip per board as a net-backplane, etc.

One of these days I really do need to take the nice, modular-design Mandelbrot set / fractal calculation and display program I wrote for the Macintosh back in the early 90s, and finish porting it to a modern programming environment with multi-core and GPU calculation support. Ought to be able to do interesting things on a device like this with lots of GPU cores running in parallel.

shadowinthelight wrote:

1GB of DDR3 RAM

Windows 7/8 with so little RAM? I think I'll pass.

jwhouk wrote:Eeeeeeyeah that would be an issue.

Wonder if you could expand it a bit.

No worries there; just download more RAM!

MerchManDan wrote:

shadowinthelight wrote:Wonder if you could expand it a bit.

No worries there; just download more RAM!

So, somebody finally decided to implement RFC 1437! Nice!

I assume that HTML5 support in the browser is required?

Okay - how many kinds of wrong is this - a Hello Kitty/Playboy Leica camera?
 

 
It's legitimately licensed, if not exactly "official", apparently.

Yeah, i'd say that's a pretty intense eruption...

[snicker] One would think headline-writers would think twice about lines like that.

AnotherFairportfan wrote:Okay - how many kinds of wrong is this - a Hello Kitty/Playboy Leica camera?

An unlikely pairing for sure, but not very surprising; Hello Kitty (the brand) isn't shy about catering to adult interests.

Yeah, that camera is nothing compared to the Hello Kitty vibrator from a few years ago.

First the 'dammit!'
HBO Explains Why They Failed To Make An American Gods TV Show

Michael Lombardo, HBO president of programming wrote:Even though we love the book, we love the idea, we love the hope of what it could be, we just couldn't get it right.

(I was really looking forward to this, too.)

Then the 'hey!'
'The Watch'

Wikipedia wrote:Set in the fictional Discworld's principal city of Ankh-Morpork, The Watch has been described by Terry Pratchett as a "Pratchett-style CSI". It is to have an episodic storyline, following the format of a "crime of the week" as tackled by the city's police force under the command of Sam Vimes.

(even if they do a half-assed job, it should be a ton of fun)

(not that I want them to do a half-assed job, mind you)

AnotherFairportfan wrote:Yeah, i'd say that's a pretty intense eruption...

I recall one article where an "r" was accidentally stuck into the middle of the word "lava". It ended up sounding like a partial summary of one of those old Godzilla movies.

Was pleasantly surprised as i started putting gas in the car - the pump display was the first place i noticed the price today (apparently just posted, judging by GasBuddy):

lake_wrangler wrote:Besides, they said it also runs Linux, and there are plenty of Linux distros that work just fine with 1GB of RAM. Especially if it's an embedded Linux distro.

THIS...

More important than the total RAM is the multi-core CPU, and 64bit support.

I wonder if it's really four 2.0 USB slots though; the picture shows two blue ones- usually that means USB 3.0...

A-hah:
http://www.amd.com/en-us/press-releases ... nov11.aspx

Features of the Gizmo 2 board include:

HDMI video/audio output
1 GB DDR3-1600 memory
HD audio in/out
mSATA/mini PCIe Connector
microSD card slot
Onboard Gigabit Ethernet
USB 3 (2) and 2 (2) connectors
Support for DirectX® 11.1, OpenGL 4.2x and OpenCL™ 1.2, enabling parallel processing
Error-Correction Code (ECC) memory support