Pictures of the outside (and inside!) of the newly introduced low-cost
AMD internet surfing thin-client called the PIC are now available. The
device uses an AMD Geode embedded processor using 1W of power, and it
runs a souped up Windows CE operating system.

Slashdot | Photos and Commentary On AMD's PIC
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=0...&tid=184&tid=1
and,

A Tale of Two Geodes
http://pair.offshore.ai/pic/

Yousuf Khan

"Yousuf Khan" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote :

> http://pair.offshore.ai/pic/

funny thing - you can grab Asus WL-500 Acces Point (or any other MIPS
board with minipci and USB), install minipci VGA card and USB drive in
it and have almost the same thing, but running linux and two times
cheaper.

Pozdrawiam.
--
RusH //
http://randki.o2.pl/profil.php?id_r=352019
Like ninjas, true hackers are shrouded in secrecy and mystery.
You may never know -- UNTIL IT'S TOO LATE.

The PIC looks barely bigger than the hard drive which resides inside
it. It might as well be one of those Firewire external harddisk
casings.

Yousuf Khan

On Wed, 8 Dec 2004 16:20:55 +0000 (UTC), RusH <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>"Yousuf Khan" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote :
>
>> http://pair.offshore.ai/pic/
>
>funny thing - you can grab Asus WL-500 Acces Point (or any other MIPS
>board with minipci and USB), install minipci VGA card and USB drive in
>it and have almost the same thing, but running linux and two times
>cheaper.

Umm.. www.newegg.com lists the Asus WL-500 for $70 and the cheapest
external USB drive they have lists for $92. I don't know how much a
mini-PCI video card sells for, but even before adding that in you're
already pushing up close to the $185 (no monitor, or $250 with
monitor) that AMD plans to sell these things for. You're certainly
not going to be anywhere close to half the price, even if you find the
above parts at a discount.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

Tony Hill <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote :

> On Wed, 8 Dec 2004 16:20:55 +0000 (UTC), RusH <(E-Mail Removed)>
> wrote:

>>funny thing - you can grab Asus WL-500 Acces Point (or any other
>>MIPS board with minipci and USB), install minipci VGA card and USB
>>drive in it and have almost the same thing, but running linux and
>>two times cheaper.
>
> Umm.. www.newegg.com lists the Asus WL-500 for $70 and the
> cheapest external USB drive they have lists for $92. I don't know
> how much a mini-PCI video card sells for, but even before adding
> that in you're already pushing up close to the $185 (no monitor,
> or $250 with monitor) that AMD plans to sell these things for.
> You're certainly not going to be anywhere close to half the price,
> even if you find the above parts at a discount.

ok, lets test my theory
http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=10371044&loc=

61$
You can sell minipci B card, lets say 20$ will make it disapeare in a
matter of a minutes from Ebay.
-20$

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...ion=20-160-502
&depa=0

23$
No need for moving parts, and 256MB is plenty of space + cooler +
smaller.

http://business.lieske-elektronik.de...International-
Co.-9513-010-Barebone-MSI-MS9513-Zubeh%F6r-Mini-PCI-ATI-Rage-XL-
Grafikkarte__653502.htm
(sory for the long link)

33Euro = 44$
Weird thing - I cant find them in $ countries, only Germany and Russia
.
This, or you can hack ordinary PCI card (lots of soldering). You can
hack ATI rage cards, matrox, even Voodoo3 PCI. Almost every 3.3V
compatible PCI vga card with framebuffer driver under Linux will work.

Lets sum it up. 61+23+44-20=108$
Not quite two times, but damn close. And can be three times cheaper if
you decide to hack the VGA card yourselfe (not counting the labour).
This thing is designed for the developing countries - labour is cheap
there. Soldring ~50 connections for 5$ is a normal practice.

You get LTP for a printer/scanner.
Mouse connected to RS232, Keyboard to leftover IO pins (7 leds are
driven from GPIO), or You can buy 5$ 4 port USB HUB and connect USB
mouse/keyboard/camera/whatever.

Those are all commodity parts from retail sources. Now imagine the bulk
prices for >xxxx quantities.
It can be easily done. Just nobody has done it before for a large
scale.

Pozdrawiam.
--
RusH //
http://randki.o2.pl/profil.php?id_r=352019
Like ninjas, true hackers are shrouded in secrecy and mystery.
You may never know -- UNTIL IT'S TOO LATE.