[conspire] CABAL this Saturday

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Ruben Safir (ruben at mrbrklyn.com):

> BTW - has anyone seen those fit/pc's?

Haven't yet seen one, but I'm actively considering a CompuLab fit-PC 2i
as one of several candidate replacements for my 2001-era VA Linux
Systems model 2230 server.  The winning feature of the model 2i is
ability to run 2 GB system RAM.  (Video output is DVI, which I suppose a
shouldn't complain about, given another decade has passed since I've
bought a monitor, but I do wish they'd included VGA for us laggards.)

The video chipset (Intel GMA500) is a bit unfortunate, as there's not 
yet open-source X11 support, but that'd be OK for my server.

All the other Intel Atom- / AMD Geode- or MIPS Longsoon-based "nettops"
seem to top out at significantly lower amounts of RAM.

(Well, hang on, several ASUS Eee "Box" nettop models, likewise
Atom-based, seem to also now support 2 GB RAM:  B202, B203, B204.  
Also, the EB1012, EB1501, and EB1501U top out at 4 GB.  And the 
latter set even have VGA in addition to HDMI video out.)


What first got me thinking about that sort of replacement were the
introduction of "Plug computers" based on Marvell-issued ARM-family
CPUs, but those seem to take a lot of tinkering and also top out at 512
MB RAM.

Anyhow, any of those machines with, say, a pair of 2 TB external
USB2-connected hard drives in MD-driver RAID1 mirror mode would cut my 
AC power usage quite a bit -- and get me away from tinkering around with 
18 GB 3.5" SCSI drives and such.