Self build a pc?

Anyone try to build a pc without a hard disk? Say, for example, with a large flashcard or similar device.

I figure: if you had 1MB card, you could build a light and robust notebook pc with good battery life, running win98SE in stripped down form. Perhaps another card for data.

Is this a workable solution?

Kenneth

You are very strange!

I’ve never heard of anyone doing anything like that. As far as I know Windows needs a hard disc, but maybe you’re thinking of emulating the hard disk with a memory card, but that emulation would have to be done in the bios at a low level, because there’s nothing else to load from.
I don’t think it can be done with off the shelf components.

There is a version of windows that does all that, Windows CE. And PocketPCs are wildly available

EDIT: I agree with stevieboy :stuck_out_tongue:

Yes, I know about pocket pc.

I’m interested in something larger (keyboard) with a notebook style function, but Much lighter (no cd, no hard disk) and longer lasting battery power.

I know it’s odd, but then …
Psion NetBook Pro: a first look
reviews.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/not … 901,00.htm

Kenneth

I’ve heard of this being done, but I don’t think it was with common components, and I’m sure it was Linux. With Win**, you can’t control what the OS insists on seeing.

Try asking on the enthusiast boards like Anandtech.com or maybe tomshardware.com

You might need a new BIOS that would recognize your flash drive, otherwise the system wouldn’t know where to look.

[quote=“KenTaiwan98”]Anyone try to build a pc without a hard disk? Say, for example, with a large flashcard or similar device.

I figure: if you had 1MB card, you could build a light and robust notebook pc with good battery life, running win98SE in stripped down form. Perhaps another card for data.

Is this a workable solution?

Kenneth[/quote]

Check out QNX. You can even run it off a floppy and be on the net…no hard drive at all.

qnx.com

public.planetmirror.com/pub/qnx/demodisk/

do you want to have WinXX or DOS will do. Since WinXX needs to have swap storage, if you use Flash disk for it will kill your battery since Flash writes take a lot more current than read. Plus it will be Sloooooooooow

If you need this for emails/net surfing or once a while WORD or Excel etc, and need a Key board check out Nokia 9210, there are enough addons avalible to make it near PC.

What you want to look at is what are called Single Board Computers, aka SBCs. These tend to be slightly bigger than a deck of cards and have everything you need on one board. It’ll be quite a bit slower than current processors, but I know they have some running on the Via C3 processor which is a x86 clone cpu running around 1ghz. SBCs usually come in models that have either flash or small disks for the boot device. Compact flash uses the standard ATA interface so it is bootable by the BIOS and compatible with most OSes. You can get CF in up to 2gb in size now, though it gets very expensive above 512mb. This is plenty big enough for an older Windows release or a basic linux install. One of the limitations of flash besides low speed is that it is only good for about 100,000 rewrite cycles. This sounds like a lot, but if you use virtual memory (page file in windows, swap partition in linux), you can easily wear out the flash. You might also consider a microdrive or a 1.8" hard drive like what’s used in the iPod. Either of these has pretty darn low power usage.

I recommend you do some web searches on single board computers and wearable computers to see what other hackers have done.

Ah, I see.

So a microdrive might be the best solution, coupled with a network interface and a card reader (rather than an inbuilt flash card).

Sounds reasonable.

I just wish I was an Engineer. I’m afraid Greek doesn’t help much with hardware design.

Kenneth

What you want for storage is a CF card/Microdrive + CF->IDE Converter. A warning when using the CF card is that they have limited read/write lifetimes. The virtual memory swapping that windows does quickly kills the card. I’m assuming something similar happens for the Microdrive.

All you need is a mini-itx board to get everything running.

The more difficult part is the battery portion. Not quite sure how that’s going to work.

IBM microdrivers are HDD not CF so the problems of write cycles is not there but they are bit slow. Plus prone to crashes.
But SBC + Microdrive is great idea. VIA has very nice and compact x86 SBC.

Wouldn’t it just be cheaper to go down to Kuanghua and piece your computer together with proper parts? Is it possible? …Of course but if it were efficient, we’d likely already have seen it on the market. These components aren’t meant to work together in such configurations or for such purpose. Your BIOS, would have a cow and you’d be running your OS off of a disk…That’s not progress…Thats diving head first into the rabbit whole. Ex:

Go to “start”----> “run”---->type in “command” —“ok” …
If this screen scares you… :open_mouth: :wink:

Wouldn’t it just be cheaper to go down to Kuanghua and piece your computer together with proper parts? Is it possible? …Of course but if it were efficient, we’d likely already have seen it on the market. These components aren’t meant to work together in such configurations or for such purpose. Your BIOS, would have a cow and you’d be running your OS off of a disk…That’s not progress…Thats diving head first into the rabbit whole. Ex:

Go to “start”----> “run”---->type in “command” —“ok” …
If this screen scares you… :open_mouth: :wink:

Wouldn’t it just be cheaper to go down to Kuanghua and piece your computer together with proper parts? Is it possible? …Of course but if it were efficient, we’d likely already have seen it on the market. These components aren’t meant to work together in such configurations or for such purpose. Your BIOS, would have a cow and you’d be running your OS off of a disk…That’s not progress…Thats diving head first into the rabbit whole. Not to mention playing right into microsoft’s hands.
If the storage isn’t on your computer…then who’s holding on to your information?

Ex:

Go to “start”----> “run”---->type in “command” —> now click “ok” …
If this screen scares you… :shock: :o :unamused: :wink:

I just ran into this while digging through the Knoppix FAQ:
knoppix.net/docs/index.php/FaqUSBBased

You might try contacting the author to find out what hardware he used; it’s not mentioned in his writeup.

Knoppix – your CD-ROM-based Linux solution to all the world’s ills. :slight_smile: knoppix.net/

k…then what?

Now that you actually have it up and running after 3-12 hrs…

The September 2003 issue of Linux Journal has an article about “put[ting] your sump pump on the web”. Ok, not exactly everyone’s dream, but it can be generalized slightly – the article is basically about using a single-board computer to monitor things. In this case, the guy wanted to be sure his sump pump was working, so he put it on the web. :slight_smile:

Anyway, long story short, take a look at soekris.com/ for some single-board computers with ethernet (three, actually!), USB, disk controller, a mini-PCI slot, and a flash card reader. Nifty stuff. Do a little more digging and you might be able to find cheaper ones without the multiple ethernet plugs – kinda useless unless you’re doing a router/firewall/vpn etc.

[quote=“KenTaiwan98”]Anyone try to build a pc without a hard disk? Say, for example, with a large flashcard or similar device.

I figure: if you had 1MB card, you could build a light and robust notebook pc with good battery life, running win98SE in stripped down form. Perhaps another card for data.

Is this a workable solution?

Kenneth[/quote]

Check out Flonix.

“Flonix is a light-weight GNU/Linux Operating System for personal computers. It is based on Damn Small Linux. There are two editions: Flonix USB Edition can be installed on an USB flash drive or compact flash card (64MB and more) and Flonix CD Edition, which is a live CD.”

distrowatch.com/table.php?di … ion=flonix
linuxdocs.tuxfamily.org/flonix/index.php

[quote=“KenTaiwan98”]
I figure: if you had 1MB card, you could build a light and robust notebook pc with good battery life, running win98SE in stripped down form. Perhaps another card for data.
Kenneth[/quote]

You might want to have a look at http://www.litepc.com/ for inspiration.
I think you will need to get a flash card connecting directly to the IDE port (something like this adapter.) or have a BIOS supporting booting from flashdrives.

For network thin-clients, booting linux or windows over the net: LTSP Project

If you do not need Windows Apps, Knoppix, comes with OpenOffice.org and other stuff, boots from the CD.

OTOH, Laptop harddrives do not use THIS much power nowadays and every modern OS & BIOS turns them off after a predefined time amount. Most of the energy goes on the LCD brightness…

lm