Pcp Rethought

JackFrost22 · Post by **JackFrost22** » Mon May 30, 2005 11:42 am

man dont dis cennar fdsman I mean come on he is helping

FDSMAN · Post by **FDSMAN** » Mon May 30, 2005 1:22 pm

yes, well none of you under stand you see that pic below?

WELL THE CASE WILL BE GONE ZILCH NADA NONE ZERO AGAIN IT WILL NOT BE THERE!

as you can tell I am a bit mad right now, and I know how big its going to be
its half the size of my atx computer I am using to make this post and its going inside its own custom case

FDSMAN · Post by **FDSMAN** » Mon May 30, 2005 1:34 pm

ok, teraflop, i need to know if there is a graphics card that gives the same profomance and is going to not use so much battery power, and the ribbion cable was a good ideabut I will have to wait to get more moeny if I want to purchese that

cennar · Post by **cennar** » Mon May 30, 2005 3:12 pm

i dont care how big you think it wont be case change or not its not low profile and its going to be hevy, are you atleast going to change the cooling and add lowprofile ram pci or agp slots? that kind of thing would help.. and by the way if you where going to keep it in tha same case i wouldnt even bother to help or any thing i would just asume its a noob i want to make a PORAQULE X-block... i think it could work just you need to look more in to how you are going to do it not just what you want to have... think of when its done, how big is it going to be draw a few full size pics of the final concept based on mesurments on shuttles site.

teraflop122 · Post by **teraflop122** » Mon May 30, 2005 6:55 pm

Unfortunately, the information you want is not readily available. I did manage to determine through mostly deductions and extrapolations based on biased and untrustworthy data that the GeForce 6600GT is one of the less demanding cards available. According to one obscure source, the GeForce 6600GT AGP card uses a max of 2.52 amps across a 12v line- meaning a power input of about 31 watts. Pretty reasonable for the performance.

Many SFF cases are approximately 12 by 8 inches, with the motherboards being maybe a quarter of an inch smaller on all sides. It is concievably possible to make a computer that is 2 - 2.5 inches thick. The process would involve using a heavily modified heatsink.

Imagine the motherboard being oriented horizontally, with the underside towards you. With the use of the AGP ribbon cable, the video card would be flat against the side facing you, creating half an inch of space over the rest of the underside of the motherboard. Next to the video card would be the slimline Cd/DVD drive- which happens to be about the same thickness. The LCD would co directly on top of those items. There would still be space on the underside of the motherboard (the "top" of the unit/the side facing you) for a slimline laptop Hard Drive + IDE adaptor.

The heatsink could be modified to be only 1 inch tall, simply by using one that is wider. One could then concievably pack AA's in, around, and just above the motherboard components (on the "bottom" of the unit/the side facing away from you).

According to initial calculatios, the average power consumption of FDSMAN's PCp would be between 5 and 6 amps (60 and 72 watts) at 12 volts. Rechargable AA's hold about 2300 mAH. 8 AA's would yeild about 20 minutes of play time. 16 would yeild 40. 32 would yeild 80 or 1 hour and 20 minutes of play time. It is possible that C cells would fit on the underside of the motherboard- a case in which the outlook is a little brighter. 8 C batteries at 4500-5000 mAH would yeild almost a full hour of play time. 16 C batteries would give you a comfortable 2 hours. D batteries are even nicer, albeit enormous. 8 D batteries at about 9000-10000 mAH would yeild around 2 hours of play time. 16...would take up to much space to even talk about ~_~

The size shouldn't be to much of a problem, but powering the unit will be. I will continue to crunch on this problem, as I have nothing else to do for most of the day

I will be powering my PCp with an external pack of 8 D batteries. My low power components take about 1090 mA of power, so 10000 mAH D batteries would give me something like 9 hours of play time.

(EDIT): Did I type ALL that!? Yeesh....talk about getting carried away...

teraflop122 · Post by **teraflop122** » Mon May 30, 2005 9:06 pm

Ugg. Double posting because doing so ensures that this question will be seen:

Does anyone know a component I can use to step 5 volts UP to 7.2 volts?

tom61 · Post by **tom61** » Mon May 30, 2005 10:20 pm

teraflop122 wrote:Ugg. Double posting because doing so ensures that this question will be seen:

Does anyone know a component I can use to step 5 volts UP to 7.2 volts?

Maxim has some stuff that can step DC voltage up.

nos_slived · Post by **nos_slived** » Mon May 30, 2005 11:07 pm

http://www.maxim-ic.com/qa/info/milspecs/MAX641.PDF

Those have input range of -0.3V to 18V, and the same output range.

teraflop122 · Post by **teraflop122** » Tue May 31, 2005 7:32 am

Ah, thanks for the help nos_slived, but as tom61 mentioned in another thread, it would probably be easier (and certainly less expensive) to bypass the 7805 and feed the 5v to where its needed.

FDSMAN · Post by **FDSMAN** » Tue May 31, 2005 6:12 pm

erm,

so what's the progress on it now?

teraflop122 · Post by **teraflop122** » Tue May 31, 2005 7:14 pm

Progress on who-what-where???

I have found what may (or may not) be the perfect motherboard for my purposes: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... eName=WDVW

The Geode GX1 processor will probably choke on such things as Quake 3, but it includes a CF slot, uses SO-DIMMs, has tiny heatsinks, and includes all the necessary wiring. I'm not perfectly sure how sheerly underpowered it is, though. Supposedly, that particular Geode is supposed to compare to a 400MHz Via Eden, but I can't be sure.

One thing I LOVE about this mobo+CPU is that it only takes 1.3amps and 5 volts (6.5 watts) on average to run. With the LCD factored in, along with a single CF card, the power requirements pan out to ~1.7 amps.

So, lets see here. Alkaline D batteries reportedly offer 20500 mAH of capacity. Four of them would yeild the 5 volts I need (give or take a little). With just four D batteries, I would get.... 12 hours of play time.... Seems insane, but then again, that processor may prevent me from actually doing any playing at all.

FDSMAN · Post by **FDSMAN** » Tue May 31, 2005 10:38 pm

ok, I might rethink the project onece more If I can find some kind of smaller mother board that uses the amd CPU terraflop told me about

cennar · Post by **cennar** » Tue May 31, 2005 11:43 pm

just look and learn man, the best thing you can do right now is expand and compromise. expand our reschearch and compromise a bit, like you dont expect to play some of the realy kick ass games just about to come out but it would suck if you couldnt lift or move your portable, or comfortably hold it. Minis have PCI/agp slots in a multitude of processors and i serously sugest you look for the smallest thing before you get reddy to pile on every thing. I know its builder beware most of the time. but i think you sould serously concider that maby your not seeing the phisical size when your picking parts out. because it looks like this is some thing your going to have to lug in a tool box every where with a screen and a keyboard.

teraflop122 · Post by **teraflop122** » Wed Jun 01, 2005 8:30 am

I ran some performance tests on this motherboard:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... %3AIT&rd=1

I gave it 256MB of DDR266 memory, and connected it to some random desktop parts. Though it is only 1GHz, and has no L2 cache at all, the integrated components alone managed to run Unreal Tournament 2004 at 13-21 frames per second. It would concievably be able to produce very playable frame rates in newer games if you gave it a PCI video card, such as a nice, cheap (fanless) GeForce FX5200. Once again, a ribbon cable extender could be used to mount the video card underneath the mainboard. Give it a healthy 512MB stick o' ram, and I bet you would be rather satisfied with its performance.

The CPU only takes about 1000mAH at 12volts. Modding its heatsink would be easy, too. All you do is push straight down and towards the middle of the board, bending the sink so that it looks like a rhombus from the side

To the best of my knowledge, none of the Mini-ITX and 3.5" industrial motherboards accept AMD CPU's, just Intel P3,P4,P-M, Via Eden, C3, and Geodes. An Intel chip is your best bet if you want performance. The others are best if you want long battery life. ~_~

cennar · Post by **cennar** » Wed Jun 01, 2005 10:30 am

thats better... k so size and power. now shape, wight, and heat!