I still don't understand why people WANT motherboards with only one expansion slot. They must really like cheezy graphics and CPU-hungry on-board components. I'd like to know how much CPU time the hard drive controller and audio system use on the AmigaOne boards.
The same as they use on every other system you can buy from any other OEM these days; barely any, in practice.
Piping 44.1KHz * 16bit to a soundcard DAC is piping 44.1KHz * 16bit to a soundcard DAC, no matter how much you did or didn't pay for the card. UATA is UATA. I prefer SCSI too, but in claiming the integrated peripherals are less than you'd get from Apple or Gateway, get over it.
Yes, you can build a pizza box, but you still can't make a laptop.
You can't? D*mn, and you just gave away the 'killer app' for the uA1-I. PCI-104 allows you to inject power, and one big 'daughterboard' with the appropriate LCD controller (yes, @#%$# LVDS would've made this easier), charging apparatus/battery holster/PSU, and a Cardbus bridge would make a scary-flexible little system.
A scary-expensive one, too, and not one that'd win any prizes for thin size, but at least it'd be doable.
(Oh yeah: Gut a USB Happy Hacking or equivalent thin'n'light keyboard/pointer combo for input.)
Besides, with the rise of flat-panel displays, I'm surprised more companies don't make sideways computers that mount behind the monitor. You can still get a machine with PCI slots if you do that.
If you're talking about those designs the Germans showed off a bit back... I've been saying that for a while, too. However, ITX is still the favored form factor for this, because most people looking for 'cute' PC-in-monitor designs don't give a crap about expansion.
Why does everyone insist on using tiny HSFs for the CPU? I thought the PPC was supposed to be so cool. A plain, passive heatsink for $2 should do fine for such a chip.
Well, they switched to active cooling before anyone realized nobody'd finished the Linux support, and don't seem to have looked back. ;-)
I can understand that aspect, though, to the extent that AMD's gone to doing the same... Nobody needs a reputation for flakiness for dealers doing things that 'should work.' (Comparing and contrasting the Beige G3 in the house, various 486s, and the Via C3, a passive heatsink should be fine.. if it's the size of a tall K6-2 cooler and placed immediately within the path of airflow. But there's no retaining mechanism for something that heavy,* so welcome to catch-22.)
*A plastic 'spider' that clips around the edge of the board would work, in combination with thermal tape, but who wants to go through the trouble of fabricating when the design's already so overbudget?