I would imagine that most of the drive manufacturers would support SSU control using pin 11, especially if they also have jumpers to control it's operation. Other than that, I have no idea though. Unless it's in the datasheets or you could get the manufacturers to tell you, I think you would have to...

I have just discovered something that may be of interest in your quest to get staggered spin-up working properly - your power supply! The SATA II specs for the power plug (available here ) allow for a couple of optional uses for pin 11 (which was previously reserved in the SATA I spec). One of these...

As for the use, WHS with some extras.. Ideally, it should be able to supply at least three HD data feeds while managing downloads, and such. I have a D945GCLF, actually, and that doesn't seem to cut it (AND it only has a 100Mbps NIC...) That there is the problem - if you want your server to do anyt...

Sorry - I meant you would not be subject to extra VAT on import, as you are paying the UK rate. I had thought you were under the impression you would be hit for VAT & import duties on the way in, as you would be for a US purchase. Should have taken more notice of your comment about training to be a ...

Try linitx.com (in the UK) for the Pico. The 120W version (they don't list the 150W yet, but it is brand new so not that surprising) is just under £30 inc vat, the shipping to Portugal adds around £10 via the cheapest method they offer (I checked it with a Portuguese address). With the current exc...

I wasn't aware the 360 psus were 12v - that makes things much easier. Although they are pretty big! Much more elegant than 2 bricks though, and probably cheaper than 2 smaller bricks. The price you quote for the pico seems very high though - I can get get a 90W pico for about £30 in the UK without ...

The way I'm thinking is: the Pico can handle sub-60'' 8A max on the 12V rail. So, if the ~1.7A on the 12V rail could drop to, say, 1.5A max, 4 drives powering up would still allow for 24W power to the motherboard. With tweaking, WHOLE systems can idle at ~25W (mobo+CPU+RAM+2.5'' HDD, on a PicoPSU, ...

All of the above are overkill for the system I was suggesting. Almost all pc/104 boards run on just 5v, and if you choose a suitably low power model you could run both the board and a 2.5" disk from one of these and a small battery: http://cgi.ebay.com/Car-Charger-for-PDA-MP3-MP4-PMP-5V-2A_W0QQitemZ...

I might be a little late as this thread is a bit old, but search ebay for pc/104 industrial boards. I have several Pentium 166MMX boards with 128mb RAM, 2xusb1, ide, vga, sound etc all on board in a 90x94mm motherboard. Full load it runs about 5W, add a few watts for a 2.5 hard disk and you're all s...

As I said earlier, I very much doubt you really NEED a new machine to handle what you are trying to do. For file serving tasks for small numbers of users (as on a SOHO network) the network and hard drives will limit speed far more than the cpu will. Your XP should be easily fast enough to handle it'...

For women, because they accept the myth that SUV's are safer than ordinary cars. Exactly. The only real-world crash tests I have seen involving an SUV resulted in the SUV driver being killed both when hitting another SUV and when hitting a saloon car. The high roof pillars and long roof panels on m...

I agree about mobile processors and boards being an odd choice for a non-portable system. If you want a powerful yet economical cpu get a c2d or ath64 & undervolt/underclock agressively when idle to drop the power usage (or even power the system off or suspend to ram, then restart over the network i...

Fans are tricky beasts, as the effective resistance will change as the speed changes. You would be better off using diodes to get the drops in voltage you want. Have a look at the site below and it will tell you all you need to know. http://www.cpemma.co.uk/diodes.html The advantage of using diodes ...

But you are missing my point. The gpu was no more important in the 80s than the cpu was. So saying that the CPU has never been more important than the GPU since the 80s is not true. The issue back then was not one of 'better card = better game', which is what the thread is asking about. It was a com...

This might be sufficient with the new low power cpus AMD are promising. I haven't yet met a cooler, that wouldn't be sufficient with a K8 cpu. Same goes for Core 2 Duos. True, but if you re-read my post I was actually refering to running a cooler of this size semi-passively on a K8. I have not yet ...

Link/more info? As you say, the dual fans might be a little noisy. But it might be suitable to run in something like the upcoming microfusion with 2 80mm fans next to it with some kind of duct to direct airflow? This might be sufficient with the new low power cpus AMD are promising. If the little fa...

height is my concern too. An HTPC sits so much nicer under my TV if it is only the same height as a dvd player. Depth I can handle as I can't see it anyway.

I ALWAYS have the desire to build a new rig. Sadly I rarely have the funds... No idea on the psu efficiency I'm afraid. You can buy a device that will measure the power input from the wall however. If you work out roughly what your system should draw you can calculate a rough measure. But it will li...

You say you don't need performance as this is a file server. Do you really need the upgrade at all? You could probably underclock that 2000 you have (if I remember correctly it'll be running around 1.6Ghz. If you knock your fsb down you you will drop the power output etc. Also if you have integrated...

Exactly. A game was written to run on specific graphics hardware, which meant that performance was not the reason to choose a different card. Actually, if something requires specific graphic hardware that is pretty much the definition of graphics hardware being important. Yes, one EGA card wasn't g...

but if your case is only 2 inches high and 6 inches square, taking out the optical drive is likely to reduce the case height by a full 11mm, which is over 20% volume reduction. Which is noticeable.

So wait, your saying the ability to put something on the screen isn't the most important thing for computer games? No - I'm saying that graphics cards were not something you could choose to get better performance from a game. What I remember from playing computer games in the 80s is that there were...

I didn't mean to make my post sound so negative. I just kept on finding nice small options for motherboards that I didn't know existed, but I am yet to find any decent cases to go with them. I guess you're right about the purpose of thin clients - I should have said that most thin clients don't need...

I don't remember CPU ever being more important than GPU for games and I'm going back to the 1980s on this one. I'm intrigued as to what gpu was important in the 80s. The first recognised graphics card (from IBM) was only released in 1981, and for nearly 10 years graphics cards in pcs did little mor...

Not an answer for you I'm afraid. But I'm curious as to the performance/capacity of such drives. What are they like? I assume from the interface they are some flavour of SCSI, but as they are pretty old ()or are they? Another assumption...) do you run them for anything other than nostalgia? I'd be s...

I have no idea about the Typhoon - I have heard good things about it however. To be honest I haven't seen a good report about the Sonic Tower though - although again I have no personal experience. I'm not sure either of them are available for SoA either - both seem a little heavy for that kind of so...

Thermalright SI-97 (or SI-97A) is probably the best cooler to go for on socket A. They cool well and are very light. Or if your motherboard has mounting holes get a Zalman 7000 (or 7700, but check if it's SoA compatible, I can't remember off the top of my head). Personally I would stick with the AlC...

Exactly my point - to put a C2D on a mobo you need to have at least an matx board. Which means there is little point trying to save the space needed for a drive, as it won't make much difference to the overall case volume. The only cases I know of that do not provide a space for any drives at all ar...

There are several options for thin client type cases that do not have space for a drive, and are therefore tiny and often silent. However they only have space for pc/104 or nano-itx motherboards, and nothing that will come close to mATX or similar that you could put a C2D into. Most boards of this t...

What would happen if you cut 2 opposite corners out of a fan, and sealed off both the front and back of the fan? In other words made a combination of the above 2 methods, to blow air along a narrow duct. I reckon you'd get pretty poor airflow, but you might get more air for less noise than using sma...