Intel 80C186/80C188 Evaluation Board? Re: Single Board Computers

[Chuck Guzis]

On 10/11/2005 at 8:34 PM Gil Carrick wrote:

>Sure, but my point was that it normally runs without one so that saying a
>device requires secondary storage and a console to be considered as
>containing an OS is not a definition that is very useful. 

I don't believe that's what I was saying.  My definition of a "non-PC" PC stipulated that the device have sufficient I/O for some sort of secondary storage and the ability to drive a console, in addition to being able to host a more-or-less commodity OS.

Thus, my microwave oven fails in that there's no way to add a console and no secondary storage.  And I doubt that there's a commodity OS that would run on it.  Same goes for my trackball--it's got a Microchip PIC in it, but there's just not enough of the other stuff  there.

So the Linksys router would satisfy the requirement--it can run a commodity OS (LInux), has secondary storage (Flash) and has sufficient I/O to drive a console (through the RJ-45) .  I suspect that you can just telnet to 192.168.0.1 (or some other IP address) and get a login prompt.

I could run CP/M 86 (or even MS-DOS) on my little FAX box--it's got the I/O and secondary storage. 

Maybe we should stipulate that the secondary storage is nonvolatile...

Cheers,
Chuck