Hello,

I do have questions about the EFIKA that may relate to a potential project (which I have little time to develop):

1. Is there CardBus support planned? SATA?
2. What's the smallest enclosure one can get an EFIKA in?

I'm referring to a company named LogiCube, who makes a small ARM-based disk copier that runs Linux. They have a decent product, but the CPU is underpowered, and the architecture is not that expandable (doesn't have really good SATA or SCSI support).

The EFIKA looks like it would really be able to handle jobs like this.

Not in the basic design we have right now. There is a PCI slot on the non-graphics version which can be used for SATA expansion though, and we have drivers for Marvell and Sil SATA chipsets in firmware either in development or already done.
I made a paper box for it to test that theory, and it measures 12x16x5cm with a graphics card and riser, or 3cm tall if you remove the graphics card and riser. Somewhere between for any other card without a big heatsink glued to the top.

Nintendo made a big fuss about the Wii being "the size of 3 DVD cases stacked, maybe a little bigger". Well sitting here I am looking at my paper chassis and a stack of Seagate disks, and it's the size of 2 Seagate 80GB disks stacked, maybe a little bigger..

It's hard to know what real size you'd need depending on what cabling and so on is there, in my opinion.
It should do fine, for sure. We'll have to get you one

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Matt Sealey

can you post a picture of the paper chassis youve made for the efika, neko
cheers

Being white it does not photograph well. Being made of a single sheet of construction paper means it does not look very good.

It was just to get a rough size of the board and then to go and look for a box at an electronics store with the same kind of size (I have yet to venture out to an electronics store for a project box

I am investing some time later this week on a cardboard EFIKA box which will look very pretty and may incorporate little bits of metal, foam and plastic rather than taped-together-folded-paper.

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Matt Sealey

im just trying to get some dimensions settled on for a decent size case for the efika. it will probably have room for a lappy harddrive, the efika + onboard GFX (depends on what i recieve, hopefully i can make cases for all the different combo boards), slimline CD drive, PSU and maybe some room for a LCD and some extra bits and pieces.

BTW construction paper is one of the best things to prototype with.

PS. i see flood control has been activated

look at this gorgeous case :

http://bbrv.blogspot.com/2006/05/amiga- ... ct_14.html

More details: EFIKA fits in a 5.25" CDROM bay! I would guess this is the smallest usable space you could put it. In a server tower imagine 7 bays and 7 EFIKA.

With a graphics card in the riser the system is just a LITTLE bit too high to fit in a bay but only by millimeter or a fraction of a millimeter. Width is smaller and length is about the same as a "standard length" CDROM drive with space to spare at the back so it should be no problem to fit in if you have a fairly "luxurious" case even with graphics or SATA attached to the PCI slot.

I have refined my PaperCase a little and taken suggestions from Gerald, and it is taking shape as a real prototype now. I will take pictures in 10 minutes..

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Matt Sealey

10 minutes are up:

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Matt Sealey

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Matt Sealey

it looks like a very practical case (abeit cheap )
im looking for materials which are easy to work with and fairly tough for the home brew case

Of course it's cheap I made it out of paper.
Well my next project is to rework this case to include space for a larger power supply (should add 2cm to the width, making it almost square; Mac Mini style). Additionally I will make it more modular (removable backplane) and add tests for guide rails or U clips for the front lid hinge. I also want to make sure it can be made from metal *OR* moulded/vacuum-formed plastic in the long term.

Project after that is to dismantle an old broken CDROM/DVDROM case (take the CDROM hardware out first of course) and invent screwholes and placing from that. A CDROM case is even simpler design and if we can reproduce it then we can make the EXACT chassis that will fit in a drive bay. The storage density should be huge.

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Matt Sealey

I think this PSU is large enough:

http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl/sc.8/categ ... /id.417/.f

Wow, a cdrom format case would be awesome. One could create very nice systems (for all sorts of monitoring tasks for example) with a very standard size and just fit them in just about any system case.

Only thing better than that would be able to plug a standard 12 volt power plug of the host systems psu in and have the efika draw its power from there

Neko,

The non-graphics version boots up on a serial port (9600/8/n/1), correct?

Can the firmware support write-blocked devices?

Thanks,

MBP

115200, 8n1, no flow control.

Define "write blocked"? You mean like those HP disk passwords?

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Matt Sealey