I remember reading an article in one of the sailing rags on how to build
your own boat computer using a flash memory card...no spinning disk, no
fan...minimal opportunity for salt-water corrossion.

Anybody remember what magazine and issue, or where to get such plans?

Glenn.
s/v Seawing
www.seawing.net

Glenn A. Heslop wrote:
I remember reading an article in one of the sailing rags on how to build
your own boat computer using a flash memory card...no spinning disk, no
fan...minimal opportunity for salt-water corrossion.

Anybody remember what magazine and issue, or where to get such plans?

Glenn.
s/v Seawing
www.seawing.net

There are a few different ways of acheiving this these days. Personally
I'd take the bootable USB flashdrive approach. There are a number of
advantages to this - for one just carrying the USB device around allows
you to 'boot up' anywhere there is a compatible motherboard. A 2 gig
flashdrive would give enough capacity for a windows operating system
installation and a few small applications and can be had for under
£100 - In the US of A about 1/2 that. In the US a 4 gig drive is
around US$200 and an 8 gig can be had for $489 see
http://www.supermediastore.com/2gbpendrive.html

8 gig is more than my last business laptop had and it still serves me
well as a carry around tool!

The first thing you need is PC with a motherboard that is USB boot
compatible. There are several approaches - a standard motherboard, a
laptop, one of the boat PC's or car PC's on the market today or a
specialised small form factor PC such as PC104. The specialised
products will have more power efficiency since they are generally
designed to run from non mains supplies.

A google of 'Bootable USB' or 'boot from USB' will return a good list
of reading.

Try
http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~shaher/Bootable_USB.html

http://www.weethet.nl/english/hardwa...omusbstick.php

A helpful article can be found at
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device.../usb-boot.mspx it is
interesting to note that this MS article is 17 months old and is
already well behind the technology curve.

http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/fi...oad/20306.html

Ian

Also this one

http://www.aaltonen.us/archive/2004/...-key-addendum/

Another way forward could be to use a standard low-noise, no-fan computer.
Typically these are also quite small and simple (lower risc of failures)
everything-on-one-board computers. Not all Pc's are alike the monsters
sitting under the desk keeping our feets warm.

/Bjarke


"nimbusgb" wrote in message
oups.com...

Glenn A. Heslop wrote:
I remember reading an article in one of the sailing rags on how to build
your own boat computer using a flash memory card...no spinning disk, no
fan...minimal opportunity for salt-water corrossion.

Anybody remember what magazine and issue, or where to get such plans?

Glenn.
s/v Seawing
www.seawing.net

There are a few different ways of acheiving this these days. Personally
I'd take the bootable USB flashdrive approach. There are a number of
advantages to this - for one just carrying the USB device around allows
you to 'boot up' anywhere there is a compatible motherboard. A 2 gig
flashdrive would give enough capacity for a windows operating system
installation and a few small applications and can be had for under
£100 - In the US of A about 1/2 that. In the US a 4 gig drive is
around US$200 and an 8 gig can be had for $489 see
http://www.supermediastore.com/2gbpendrive.html

8 gig is more than my last business laptop had and it still serves me
well as a carry around tool!

The first thing you need is PC with a motherboard that is USB boot
compatible. There are several approaches - a standard motherboard, a
laptop, one of the boat PC's or car PC's on the market today or a
specialised small form factor PC such as PC104. The specialised
products will have more power efficiency since they are generally
designed to run from non mains supplies.

A google of 'Bootable USB' or 'boot from USB' will return a good list
of reading.

Try
http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~shaher/Bootable_USB.html

http://www.weethet.nl/english/hardwa...omusbstick.php

A helpful article can be found at
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device.../usb-boot.mspx it is
interesting to note that this MS article is 17 months old and is
already well behind the technology curve.

http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/fi...oad/20306.html

Ian

You can also get IDE to CF card adapters that'll let you use a compact flash
card connected to the IDE interface. That way you don't have to do anything
different to the PC in order to get it booted. You can get things like a
Microdrive CF card that has a disk drive on it. Flash is VERY slow
performance-wise and does have eventual read/write limits.