On Fri, 25 Oct 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > 1) It should be small. Maybe with its own custom case, no bigger than a > notebook PC. I was thinking smaller than that, the size being of importance to me too! My largest acceptable size is 210x297mm (A4), with two drive bays in the case, and room for expansion cards, for flexibility. > 2) It should be able to connect to a TV - UHF, SCART, and whatever other > common TV inputs are in use. This one is difficult because of the variety of modulated TV standards. I think a (S)VGA connector is a minimum, and it could support TV resolutions in software. > 3) Fanless. Absolutely. The only moving part I envisioned would be the storage medium, which should be as quiet as possible. A 5400RPM quiet HD would be fine. > 4) Battery operation possible - internal rechargeable, or external 12vdc > unregulated. I actually pictured almost exactly this, then realised it is in direct conflict with item 1. Regulating power within the case is a heat nightmare. Either one edge of the case has to be devoted to cooling and a big heatsink, or the regulation has to be moved off-board. When you have to regulate 12v, 5v and 3v3 to run a modern processor, memory, and a hard drive, etc, well, it takes up board area and even efficient designs give off a lot of heat. However, there are some very nice small form factor PC cases with silent PSUs turning up in the PC marketplace that fit the size/power requirements... Dave
