Puppy in a keyboard
Posted: Sun 22 Jan 2006, 03:53
The mini-itx motherboards at 17cm by 17cm are small enough to fit in a standard keyboard if the bottom half of the keyboard case is replaced with a slightly deeper clamshell that has openings for connectors and will accomodate either a thin HD and cd-rw drive or standard size drives.
for the motherboard I picked as likely candidates the VIA EPIA ML5000EA with 533mhz cpu or the ML6000EA with 600mhz cpu. Both are fanless and full featured including USB-2, onboard VGA, audio and LAN. These boards are available at outlets such as Provantage.com and Idotpc.com.
Configured with 256mb DDR 266, and power supply the cost is around $222. Of course a new HD and/or CD drive would add to that cost, but with Puppy 2, I would think a CD-RW and/or HD would be entirely optional.
I have not ordered the parts yet or torn apart one of my keyboards, but the idea has lots of apeal for me. Does anyone know of any serious drawbacks to this approach?
for the motherboard I picked as likely candidates the VIA EPIA ML5000EA with 533mhz cpu or the ML6000EA with 600mhz cpu. Both are fanless and full featured including USB-2, onboard VGA, audio and LAN. These boards are available at outlets such as Provantage.com and Idotpc.com.
Configured with 256mb DDR 266, and power supply the cost is around $222. Of course a new HD and/or CD drive would add to that cost, but with Puppy 2, I would think a CD-RW and/or HD would be entirely optional.
I have not ordered the parts yet or torn apart one of my keyboards, but the idea has lots of apeal for me. Does anyone know of any serious drawbacks to this approach?