My Portable PC Idea

[Unidentified Assilant]

I have an Idea for My New PC kinda of thing (that hopefully will be handheld), I have some spare parts left over from other PCs and things like Hard-Drives and 512MB Memory and Controllers, so I just need some more parts and I'm ready to build my first Portable, a PC! But I wanted to make a N-Gage kinda thing, with detachable ports for a headset (with Microphone and Earphones (as well as Dual-Speakers on it), so you can phone people and send text messages using it, and when phoned, you can continue playing your game while you answer a call or something (or pause it if you want)

I know this sounds extremely difficult, but the cell phone part I think I have covered already, any thoughts?

Component List:
Some Motherboard (Not yet decided on which one)
512MB Memory (Which is lying around the house)
4-20GB Hard-Drive (It won't need to be big because that's not the device I'll probably use)
Compact Flash Card Reader (To Save Games To)
3" Mini-Disc Drive (For Playing Games From Probably)
USB Controller (2 Axis, 6 Buttons, 4 Shoulder Buttons)
PS2 Mini USB Keyboard
Possibly a Cell-Phone (It depends on how that is done, but that idea may be removed completely)

[Niku-Sama]

not off a cell phone battery you wont

[Unidentified Assilant]

I'm not planning on using a Cell-Phone Battery, I'm probably using a Li-Ion to power both (if possible)

[Niku-Sama]

oh for some reason i managed to get battery out of the cell phone part...ok i think i can finally sleep now night night

[Unidentified Assilant]

goodnight

[SgtBowhack]

This was discussed already elsewhere (in a semi-unrelated context) but they make CompactFlash IDE adapters. If you have enough RAM that you think you can get away with not using a swap, you can use a CF card as a hard drive (which will limit you to about 2GB probably) which would decrease size and power a lot. They sell them on eBay all the time
As for the cell phone thing, you'd need to make some sort of front-end for all of your software (that is to say, basically your own custom OS) to support such features in everything for it. Everything for N-Gage is for N-Gage alone, but PC stuff is really not something that lends itself well to your ideas...
I'd consider using the same or similar motherboard as tom61, since it takes a 5v line which is really good for portabilization (the ATX/ITX plugs are about as crappy as you can get).
I'd say really without those two things, you're gonna be hurting when making a portable of a decent size.

[Unidentified Assilant]

Ok then, screw the phone thing, this will be primiarily for gaming, and a 2GB Hard-Drive isn't enough, as Windows XP takes 1.5GB of a Hard-Drive anyway, and what is 500MB gonna do for me?

[Unidentified Assilant]

Also I will be using a SlimDVD Drive that 'sucks' up CD's, because they are tiny and they rock, and they're will be something that changes JoyToKey configuration from either Keyboard to Mouse, because the Controller will take the position of a Keyboard using a program that converts Keyboard into Joypad (Great for Emulation)

[Sparkfist]

Theres a piece of software out there that removes thing from XP that you will never use (cuts the bloat). Look for XP lite. Yeah your going to be set back about $50 but this will cut Windows down fast.

Now as SgtBowHack mentioned you cant have swap on CF as they'll die to fast. If you going to be using it as a gaming maching I'd suggest getting at the very least 512mb DDR SD-ram.

Otherwise, good luck.

[bicostp]

In that case, why not run 2000?

DOS only takes 5 megs...

[Sparkfist]

There is also a 2000 lite. Microsoft adds a lot of bloat to the OS, Hell mac OS 10.2 only takes like 1.5-2.0 gigs. Your not going to be able to escape the fact that you'll have to either run some *NIX or get that lite program.

[tom61]

How much are you willing to spend? For about $130 you can get a 40GB 1.8" harddrive (half a laptop drive in physical size). For about the same price, you can get a 5GB CF microdrive. Or for a bit higher than $50 you can get a 20GB laptop drive (which is the way I went).

3" Mini-Disc Drive (For Playing Games From Probably)

Are you talking a Sony Mini-Disc(tm) or have you found a 3" CD/DVD reader for PC? I'd like a link if the later.

[SgtBowhack]

Well, these drives are not just smaller in size, they're smaller in power requirements, so they save in other ways. Using WindowsXP is right out. There's no reason to anyway. Once you have it set up properly, Windows 2000 is pretty much the exact same thing except for driver support. What I'd say is to set it up on a hard drive, and then try and get the partition as small as possible and transfer it to CF. If you do get a Microdrive, it will act as any regular hard drive, but due to size and all that, very low power. I forgot about the 1.8" drives but those might be a good solution too.
Sparkfist: Good call on 2000 and XPlite. I highly recommend it. Most of the stuff you can do with their free version though (so buying it is just adding costs that aren't that big of a deal).
Honestly, for a portable PC, Win98 may be the best solution though. Sure it's slightly less stable, but there are ways to raise the stability (including using 98lite, which makes the whole thing run in like 100MB or less). The only worry I have there is Win98's poor RAM management... not sure if there is software out there to help it address 512MB properly (my understanding is that Win98 will only use about 150MB of RAM because it wasn't expected to be used on anything more)
Anyway, good luck with whatever you do.

[Reploid Ayla]

why hasnt anyone tried using a mac mini yet?

[soundwave]

Put in a mouse's scroll wheel, only use like a rollerblade/skateboard wheel and mount it on the side, so you turn it like a doorknob to scroll through webpages and crap.