On Monday 01 August 2005 08:24, vaibhav samant wrote:
Not sure if it will meet your requirements, but, you can check out LART, worth 230 UK pounds:
Why go pounds ??? Apna desi Simputer costs only about 10K, and has an inbuilt MP3 player. Unless ur idea is to learn making ur own MP3 player....
For real bang for the buck nothing can beat the i386 pc. The compromise is power consumption (as in cant use a battery) and size (as in cant carry around). A via cle266 based mobo with 1.6Ghz onboard cpu costs around Rs.3100. Add 128mb ram, 40gb drive, cd and box. Total Rs. 8600/-. Add 2 line lcd and remote =Rs.1200/-. Add 15" LCD, pixelview tuner card, audigy sound card and creative speakers and DVD/cd combo = Rs.26800. Load Mythtv and friends. You have a full blown home entertainment Personal Video / Audio Recording system which should last for the next 5 yrs. It should beat the crap out of commercial stuff costing 4 times as much. You need a 105db noise floor sound card to match the pros.
I am renovating my place and am doing precisely the above. I am going to add an LCD projector. My amp is a home brew 200w rms mosfet thingy. For starters i will be using my 100w 3way 20 yr old homebrew speakers (after limiting the amp ofcourse). I might build a pair of Electro Static Loudspeakers tho. The mid and high clarity and definition is astounding with ESLs. I will be loading linux bios for fast booting and will run it from a usb pendrive. In order to reduce harddisk wear load all songs into ramdisk and stop the hd.One problem area will be the SMPS. The ones in the pc are perfect audio and rf noise sources.
Embeded boards are expensive because of miniscule volumes. Their advantage is battery operations, low heat, no moving parts and compact size. Relative to their cost the performance is pathetic. If you do not need the embedded intrinsic advantages use the i386.
rgds jtd