Going Way OT; Re: 8-bit low profile ethernet card?

[Jules Richardson]

On Mon, 2005-03-07 at 07:04 -0700, Doc Shipley wrote:
> Jules Richardson wrote:
> 
> > (I'm finally sick of hard drive noise on this 'ere desktop too, so a
> > diskless client in an old xterminal box is on the cards as soon as I
> > trip over a suitable motherboard that doesn't have monster heat
> > dissipation requirements... going to have some interesting space issues
> > with that one I expect)
> 
>    Those VIA mini-ITX boards (600-1000MHz Eden proc) make pretty good 
> X-Terminals.  If you get a mini-case with wall-wart instead of internal 
> PSU, you can run completely solid-state.  Onboard graphics are decent, 
> probably better than the old xterminal had, or they have a PCI slot if 
> you want high-end video.

Ahh, it's my usual approach to these home projects though - wait until
someone throws out the necessary parts, then do it on zero budget ;)

I've got a spare NCD 88k xterm that'd make a lovely shell (spray it
black for that NeXT-a-like look, find a black Dell or IBM keyboard and
mouse). Hardly any height to the case, but it has a reasonable footprint
and the PSU should be able to handle a modern PC board.

I've got a spare PCI graphics board that'll do 1152x874 at 24bit, which
is good enough (I've never seen a right-angled AGP bracket, but I do
have a surplus PCI one). I don't play graphics-intensive games,
thankfully. 

I just need to locate a suitable board where the CPU doesn't chuck out
masses of heat. I'm not sure what sort of speed CPU would be suitable -
probably as low as 200MHz would be fine (in PC terms) as all the number-
crunching's done server-side anyway.

I do need 44KHz stereo audio though, so I need to look into how that's
done these days on a diskless client.

(I'm glad the subject says OT already :-)

Of course, I'd rather have a NeXT cube on my desk...

cheers

Jules