Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] JackPC

[Michael <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

I'm not quite sure why someone would want the JackPC but I think the 
concept of a small PC that fits into a standard sized space inside the 
wall, or a piece of furniture, with all wiring contained inside the wall 
is a good concept. It'd save room, keep things organized, make direct 
access and damage to the PC more difficult, etc. It has most of the same 
benefits of storing your electrical wiring and plumbing inside the walls 
instead of just strapped to the outside or running along the floor.. 
which in general seems to be a good idea.

I'd like having a PC in the wall like this, with discreet access to 
ports when needed, and those speakers that hide inside picture frames 
and a monitor that is a mirror when turned off. Throw in a wireless 
keyboard and mouse and it'd be a nice clutter free system. I'm a 
believer that most good technology eventually becomes invisible and this 
is just part of that concept. Having a server somewhere doing your heavy 
processing and mini-computers throughout the environment providing a 
front-end to that processing seems an idea we're ready for. Kind of the 
Star Trek concept of omnipresent computing that you just talk to or 
communicate with touch screens or whatever is appropriate.

External drives are an outdated concept at best and if you wanted to 
it'd not be hard to create a PC of this form factor that had a built-in 
hdd and of course you could always plug external drives in with USB or 
FireWire or just have a second panel in the wall that would provide a 
drive bay as needed. I'd definitely put some more oomph into it though 
with more CPU power and more RAM. The biggest tricks would be making 
space for a powerful video card and adequate cooling. You're working in 
a space slightly smaller than a Mac Mini and your only exposing a small 
part of it to the room so you have to deal with certain issues in the 
design.

A good hack would be an article that would take us step-by-step through 
turning a Mini into an in-wall PC.
> I'm still trying to understand why I would want this:
>
> http://www.chippc.com/products/jackpc/jackpc.asp
>
> I don't know a lot of the technical jargon.  Is this just a sort of 
> little networking computer that is used to connect to other 
> computers?  Like I could run citrix or VNC or somesuch on it?  
> Obviously, it has no drives in it (no CD/DVD or even HDD, I assume), 
> and it is so small that it must have minimal memory.
>
> This helps:
>
> http://www.chippc.com/resources/JackPC_Booklet.pdf
>
> I can definitely see using these on the lab bench.


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