[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.


More information about the mythtv-users mailing list