[mythtv-users] eee PC FLASH_CON Drives
Jeff Wormsley
daworm at comcast.net
Wed Feb 24 02:38:09 UTC 2010
I'm using a Zotac ION board with no CPU fan and the laptop style power
supply. It's silent, except for the hard drive. Even the laptop drive
I have in it makes too much noise for a bedroom install. I could spend
another $100 or so for an SDD drive, which is way bigger than I need,
and I've tried netbooting but had issues with it, and I've tried using
USB sticks and had little success there as well (the only "good" stick I
had laying around is only 2G, and I can't seem to fit all I want into
that amount of space, and the 4G and 8G ones I've tried don't work well
at all as boot devices).
I also have two eeePC units, a 900 and a 901, and I've upgraded both to
bigger SSD modules, which means I have two 4G SSD's and an 8G SSD
collecting dust. I figured these would be perfect, and they were made
for booting PCs, unlike USB flash drives. Problem is, I can only find
one board to convert the FLASH_CON SSD into a PATA drive (or better, a
SATA drive, but I have a working PATA/SATA adapter). It requires a PCI
Express slot for power, and my MB doesn't have one, and I'd rather not
hack into something like that, and I also found it to be a tad
expensive. So I figured I'd build my own. I've started designing a
circuit board that has a FLASH_CON connector, an IDE header, and since
the FLASH_CON supports USB and SATA, I've added a SATA connector and
USB-A connector, as well as a 4 pin floppy power connector and 3.3V
regulator to power the drive. I've almost finished it, but I was
wondering if anyone else be interested in one of these boards? I figure
it won't cost that much more to make a panel than to just make a couple,
but stuffing them would cost a bit (I don't expect those MiniPCIe
connectors to be cheap), and it would be nice if I could get some of the
cost back, and maybe help out someone else who needs such a thing. I
certainly hold no illusions of making riches off of it. Hopefully board
and parts (and if I can get a good deal, professional stuffing of the
parts, as my soldering skills are only mediocre) won't cost more than
$10 to $20 if I build several, but that would depend on someone else
wanting the boards I don't use.
Would anyone else be interested in such a board? Or am I the only
MythTV user who happens to have a bunch of FLASH_CON SSD drives
gathering dust?
Jeff.
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