Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: ZeBeeDee on December 18, 2009, 01:04:10 PM
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Asian mini PC specialist NorhTec may be able to sort you out with a keyboard-encased computer real soon.
The Thai company this week said it will show off its Gecko Surfboard at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas early next year. The product will go on sale shortly afterward.
(http://regmedia.co.uk/2009/12/18/gecko_1.jpg)
The $99 machine runs Linux on a 1GHz x86-compatible processor, the Vortex86MX, which also contains graphics and I/O circuitry.
It's not exactly a serious number cruncher, but NorhTec reckons it's fine for basic web browsing, email and instant messaging duties. Crucially, it's a very low-power part able, it's claimed, consuming just 5W.
The Surfboard has 512MB of DDR 2 memory on board, plus an unspecified hard drive, pair of USB 2.0 ports, 10/100Mb/s Ethernet, SD card reader, VGA, and composite-video for connecting it to a telly.
(http://regmedia.co.uk/2009/12/18/gecko_2.jpg)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3-e9J_JPNg
Miggy emulation should run very sweetly on this ... will be good to get hold of one for testing purposes when it's released to the general populace :)
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Looks interesting, I would buy one if they're ever available in Europe. I'm not sure about emulating Amiga though, 1GHz means nothing, let's wait for some details on performance.
EDIT: the comparison to a "regular desktop" in the video is silly, but the machine looks interesting nonetheless. I hope it will run Linux without too much hassle.
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A third world solution where €69 is still a large amount of money, a teacher in Thailand earns on average €270 a month, so even a netbook is a months income. Load it with Puppy Linux and hook it to the television and suddenly a lot of people who couldn't afford a computer can have one at home.
I suppose the thing could have some use in the developed world, but putting a computer in a keyboard is kind of silly in 2010, most people here are better served by netbooks which give you more ram, faster processor and a screen....
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Ooh, I wanna run Aros on it! Aros is so fast.
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I don't think winuae hosted by xp would run very nicely on this.
Maybe its just me, but with a 1ghz pc with no accellerated graphics...
(I'm assuming this has no gpu) it will drag, especially with a pimped out
os3.9 setup like amikit.
I have a 1.4ghz machine and with the built in graphics on that pc, it was awfully slow. After putting in a decent vid card with gpu, it was good.
Maybe with amiga forever with the kxlight install it would be okay, but I don't think hosted by windows would be very good at all...
Steven
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On my old laptop(AMD*AThlon 1200mhz) winuae ran perfectly, so a newer cpu with more speed(1.4ghz) and somo more new instructions should be enough for emulating under xp.
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I wonder how amithlon would do...
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I'd check the specs of the cpu before you consider purchasing, I have an earlier NorhTec microclient jr (http://www.norhtec.com/products/mcjr/index.html) and while it is a great piece of hardware, the 200 MHz Vortex86 cpu has no floating point unit which mean that most a lot of linux's don't run out of the box.
I don't if the amithlon kernel has floating point emulation compiled, or if this generatation of Vortex86 has a FPU.
Gaz