On Dec 10, 2007 9:37 AM, Scott Baker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Does anyone have any experience with one of these? > > http://linuxdevices.com/articles/AT8083883801.html
no personal experience w/ this device, so you can stop reading now if you just want war stories from those who've tried this device. <blockquote> TimeNet is shipping now, priced "under $1,000" for end users, said Sprucefield. </blockquote> seeing these things is always bittersweet for me. i'm amused by the diminuitive size, and then i'm stunned by the price, and then i'm left feeling a little bit disillusioned about the lack of capabilities. i'm not sure that's worth $1000. couldn't they have at least put on a 7-segment LED display of the time? and why do we need a windows tool to set it up if it runs linux? plan 1: a quick look at sequoia's webpage indicates those are SiRFstarIII modules - I'm not terribly impressed by this chip for timing performance. after a quick look at one of my local suppliers i find that i can get a garmin gps18/lvc for $100, retail. looking at the soekris price list i can get a new NET45XX series with case and power supply for under $150. even providing my own CF card, i'd still have change from $200. so basically, i could get 3 soekris time servers for what these guys are charging for one of theirs... plan 2: i've had good results with the ublox antaris-4t, in the form of the AEK-4T eval kit - about $350 ea. Sun Fire v120 servers can be had for about $150 on ebay. add another $50 for custom cables (that's what it cost to build the sun serial port "B" cable and to have a 15m antenna extension cable made). i've a pair of systems just such as this being my time servers. plan 3: norhtec microserver (or something similar) plus a gps. last time i looked, i did not see a compelling price-performance argument... but someone else might. they do boot various unix-ish operating systems though. plan 4: nslu-2 plus a gps... I guess there's always a market for the illusion that someone else will take responsibility when it breaks... (monday morning bitters) CK -- GDB has a 'break' feature; why doesn't it have 'fix' too? _______________________________________________ timekeepers mailing list [email protected] https://fortytwo.ch/mailman/cgi-bin/listinfo/timekeepers
