BTW, there are MUCH more efficient means of prototyping KBDs, one of which is to fab a fiberglas copper-clad etched PCB replacement for the bottom membrane, thus stiffening said spongeboard! [
] ]'>
Yep, that works too
. . . and why would the interface need to be ADB? }
Just for clarity, this thread is about two different hacks:
- G3 on original Duo logic board
- New logic in Duo shell
Correct? ADB would only be required for the first hack.
will the adapted CPU interface efficiently with the Duo's heatsink?
I would assume replacing the original barely adequate heatsink was part of the equation when contemplating a CPU transplant.
a "carrier" board in the Duo form factor that "bolts right up" to the Duo's magnesium frame and has the same (or improved replacements) I/O and battery connections (or an expansion bay and INTERNAL battery combo) and places a VERY CAPABLE CPU under the magnesium heat sink
Right, now I follow you. You want to make up a carrier board for an available logic board that breaks its I/O out to the Duo's physical ports, and to the LCD. Sounds eminently doable. Similar to the
"stealth" casemods that have been performed on desktop machines, and eerily similar to a plan I've been slowly brewing for the much more spacious shell of a PB520/540.
AFAIK, that heatsink is just a sheet of stamped aluminium, not magnesium. I have in the past had visions of a drop-in replacement in stamped copper, a low-profile finned copper heatsink, and/or a kludged in heatsink/heatpipe/fan combo out of another laptop.
Nice board - but why just for an "I/O subsystem"? Why not pop an extra $30 for a complete ARM board with better specs?
Will said ARM outperform the Atom ChipSet in HP_Mini?
Probably not, no. But even the one you post above would outrun a Duo, and give a low-end G3 a decent run for its money.
I'm not all that familiar with the ARM series, but from what I gather they're decently efficient little *nix platforms, especially in watts/flops terms. Raw clockspeed is not that useful a comparison.
Again, for clarity:
- A board whose hardware design is itself open-sourced
- A board capable of running an open-source OS
Which is it? The first is a very, very small class of boards; the second, very very large.
that is capable of fulfilling all the functions of the PBX Bridge IC and ALL the slow bus subsystems of the "ubuntuDu . . . erm . . . SuperDuo!" The CPU Card/Memory, fast i/O bus would be another matter entirely
Nope, you've lost me again. The embedded boards you
seem to be discussing are all highly integrated - I'm not aware of any that place the CPU and/or any I/O on daughterboards.
/edit/ Okay,
IO daughterboards for Mini-ITX are here and useful.
MiniITX / Compatible LVDS LCD.
I'm not yet familiar with those form factors or their heating/cooling/power/space/location requirements
Mini-ITX is just a board form factor specification, like ATX. As such, there are boards available from a number of manufacturers, with everything imaginable on them, from low-power, low-heat 500MHz Pentium III derived CPUs, to ARMs, to embedded PPCs }
, integrated media processors (combined GPUs, codecs and audio DSPs), to dual sockets for a pair of quad core Xeons. Power, heat, cost, ease of development and availability vary accordingly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini-ITX
"17 x 17 cm (or 6.7 x 6.7 inches)"
There are also nano- and pico-ITX boards - rarer, smaller range, higher price/performance
Judicious searching and reading here should prove enlightening (especially the FAQ and shop) and inspiring (especially the right sidebar under Projects }
):
http://www.mini-itx.com/
BTW: FPGA technology will (should) allow implementation of LVDS out among other things.
Quite a large number of MiniITX boards have LVDS out for LCD video built-in - so you can connect directly to a bare LCD panel without the added, and substantial, expense of a DVI or VGA converter/controller board.
It does seem likely that the easiest and cheapest solution might be to rip apart a netbook and stuff that into the Duo.