--- John Wilson <wilson_at_dbit.dbit.com> wrote:
> Mine just arrived this morning, I had ordered it from Netpliance's own
> 800 # so evidently at least *they* still have stock even if CC doesn't
> (suits me, the nearest CC is 1.5 hours away from me anyway).
Good for you. I didn't want to pay the shipping and I can afford to wait
a week or two.
> In keeping with nerd tradition I've got the thing all in pieces before even
> powering it on for the first time --
Way to go.
> But the 44-pin connector is right there as promised. I'm thinking of maybe
> doing a tiny PCB rather than soldering 44 individual wires on...
There's great hack running around where you take a regular 44-pin cable
that's long enough and attach a second connector immediately adjacent to
the connector on one end. You use the inner pins of the end connector
and the outer pins on the new connector to attach to the motherboard.
-------------------
|| ||||
^^ (use these "pins")
drive end motherboard end
Since one way to view the problem is that the motherboard connector is
on the "wrong side" of the PCB (causing pin 1 to map to pin 2, etc),
couldn't you do make a cable like this...
||
--------------------
||
Wouldn't that simulate having a connector on the wrong side and reverse
the effect of the motherboard wiring?
> I wonder if there's a +12V source in here anywhere so that standard 40-pin
> IDE drives could be used too and not just laptop drives?
AFAIK, there is no ready source of 12V. Also, consider the power draw. A
laptop drive pulls 500-700mA (2,5-3.5W), a desktop drive draws closer to
9W-15W. It's even a consideration when choosing a different
CPU (ISTR the WinChip180 is rated at ~9W, most Pentia suck around 13-17W).
-ethan
ObClassic: there's plenty of space on the flash disk to stick a small OS
and a variety of apps including Kermit. If you hacked the flash and disabled
the hard disk (or had a way to specify the boot order), you could bring it
up by default into a terminal program and use it as a console if it weren't
running some other app. Yes, a dumb terminal is cheaper and probably more
VT100 compliant (double-high characters spring to mind immediately), but a
real DEC terminal is not as portable.
=====
Even though my old e-mail address is no longer going to
vanish, please note my new public address: erd_at_iname.com
The original webpage address is still going away. The
permanent home is:
http://penguincentral.com/
See
http://ohio.voyager.net/ for details.
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Received on Mon Mar 20 2000 - 11:13:56 GMT