i-RAM Box

flyswatta · 2008-01-03, 07:19 PM

I guess these things have been out a while, but can you imagine running a GBPVR client off of one of them?

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Stor...uctID=2678

You can actually buy these things of Ebay for < $100 (for the older ones - the PCI card version)
Drop a heat pipe on the CPU and a low DB fan in the power supply and it's really quiet!

You could probably even record with it, just record it over the network to another PC that's hidden away!

pBS · (This post was last modified: 2008-01-03, 10:04 PM by pBS.)

that looks like just a ram based hard drive...not a whole computer...
using ram in place of a hard drive, with sata connection to mb...
unbelieveably fast, but only 4 gigs max...so you'd be able to record to one, but not much...
now if people have hacked the cpu on it then you might be able to run something on it, but i doubt it's very usefull for anything besides a really fast harddrive...
run gbpvr app from it and your screens would looks faster,but that's it..

plus, there's compact flash -> ide adapters for about 25$ that would give you the same silence if that's what you want.. Smile

and it doesn't require a battery... Big Grin

[just get really fast mem card]

flyswatta · 2008-01-03, 10:13 PM

compact flash to ide, nice.

Yeh, I was referring to quieting down the PC with the ram harddrive and then loading winderz and gbpvr on the i-Ram drive and then just recording to a hard drive over the network. Mainly to eliminate disk noise - not that I plan on doing it, but it would be pretty cool.

Your option sounds more affordable Smile

bogyver · 2008-01-04, 02:44 AM

just so you are aware that compact flash cards have a limmited number of reqad write cycles on them and they are only really good for embedded enviorments where there are a limited number of read writes to the drive. Think about how much reading and writting is done for gbpvr it self, logs, epg, recording service stuff, etc... now pile on the windows stuff, not to mention that most cf cards only run in pio or udma33 (at least what I have seen)

I use cf cards in my home built router and freenas box, and now a shameless plug Wink

http://www.freenas.com and http://www.pfsense.com

The ram disk thing from gigabyte is awsome, I have only seen the ddr version, if they made a ddr2 version, that would be awsome becuase ddr2 is so much cheaper than ddr

pBS · 2008-01-04, 10:17 PM

yea, what you say is true about memory cards, but i'm talking about the mini-harddrives inside a cf card, i have an 8 gig that's actually a spinning hard drive in the cf card, so it isn't susceptable to the same problems...much faster too.. Smile

true, flash cards are slow when booting them on usb readers, but natively adapted to ide, it's much faster to run windows on.. Big Grin

personallly i'd use a 2.5" laptop hard drive for windows, and record to a usb disk..

Torque · 2008-01-04, 11:15 PM

flyswatta Wrote:Mainly to eliminate disk noise

On the two computers in my home office, I have suspended the HDDs using black elastic you can get at any craft store. Unless your drives make alot of noise just spinning, this will nearly eliminate any noise they make while reading/writing.

I suspended the 10K raptor in my machine and you can barely hear it anymore... prior it was about to drive me nuts accessing, sounded like i was grinding up bolts in a garbage disposal. Big Grin

I hope i-ram comes out with one that uses cheap DDR2. One of those loaded w/ 12GB+ would be sweet for installing the apps/games that take a long time to load.

bogyver · 2008-01-05, 05:32 AM

pBS Wrote:yea, what you say is true about memory cards, but i'm talking about the mini-harddrives inside a cf card, i have an 8 gig that's actually a spinning hard drive in the cf card, so it isn't susceptable to the same problems...much faster too.. true, flash cards are slow when booting them on usb readers, but natively adapted to ide, it's much faster to run windows on..

personallly i'd use a 2.5" laptop hard drive for windows, and record to a usb disk..

I see what your doing thats a good idea to use the microdrives, never got into to those, just recently started using the cf to ide adapters for my so called embeded devices
The cf cards I use in my embeded stuf with the cf to ide only run at udma 33 speeds but the cards I used are basic cf cards, becuase I wanted to go cheap and didnt need speed for my application

fender · 2008-01-07, 09:39 PM

here DDR400 is 2-3 times more expensive than DDR2 so if I went with something like that I would have to wait for the DDR2 version.