Thin client MD giving the 6040A a try.

[ouie]

To start off , not affiliated with this company at all, but giving their 6040A thin client a shot. It PXE boots and is only  139 USD. The upside is the company headquarters, I discovered, is near where I live in PA. It is a fanless, diskless machine. I just ordered two and took the option to pick them up so I could see their offices. I'll report back here how it works out if I can ever get the installer . All else fails i'll try it with pluto .

http://www.devonit.com/terminals/terminals_models_features.php

http://www.devonit.com/contact/contact.php

[RGoolsby]

any updates?

I contacted the company a week or two ago and they suggested that I try the 6030P

"is our fanless unit with PXe software.  This unit costs $199 for 128 RAM.  I can see what the cost would be for 256, 512 or 1 gig RAM.  Let me know if you would like these quotes.  If you looks at he specs for the 6030 series in the attachment I sent you in the previous email, it will have the same specs as these, only differences being the software and flash/RAM."

I haven't inquired further.. but if you got one for 139$ that works I would love to hear about it.

[totallymaxed]

any updates?

I contacted the company a week or two ago and they suggested that I try the 6030P

"is our fanless unit with PXe software.  This unit costs $199 for 128 RAM.  I can see what the cost would be for 256, 512 or 1 gig RAM.  Let me know if you would like these quotes.  If you looks at he specs for the 6030 series in the attachment I sent you in the previous email, it will have the same specs as these, only differences being the software and flash/RAM."

I haven't inquired further.. but if you got one for 139$ that works I would love to hear about it.

We have a lot of experience with Via based machines with Pluto and now with lmce. The 6030 range is based on a C3 processor which we have used successfully in the past so it should be ok. You'd want at least a 1Ghz processor and if you want to us the machine to act as a full MD with video playback etc then you'd need have enough RAM to allocate at least 64mb to video memory... so realistically that means 512mb in our experience. Remember PXE boot means that all the processing/video handling etc is happening locally in the MD's processor and the Core is just acting like a big remote hard drive essentially. A C3 at 1Ghz would be about the minimum for SD video playback under UI1.

Currently we are focussed on motherboards using the Via C7 processor clocked at between 1.2 & 2.0 Ghz combined with either the CN700 or CX700M graphics chip.

[RGoolsby]

Ok, thats what I wanted to hear.  I want to stream video to all over the house and I would have at least upgraded to the 512 ram for video...  I am still waiting about the cost to upgrade the units.

What do the units with the C7 processor run?

[RGoolsby]

fyi:

6030P w/ 128 RAM: $199

6030P w/ 256 RAM: $205

6030P w/ 512 RAM: $215

6030P w/ 1 Gig RAM: $240

 

those were the prices i was quoted...

[mrothwell]

I didn't really see very good video or audio outputs from those.  At a minimum you want to have HD out and sp/dif.

[totallymaxed]

Ok, thats what I wanted to hear.  I want to stream video to all over the house and I would have at least upgraded to the 512 ram for video...  I am still waiting about the cost to upgrade the units.

What do the units with the C7 processor run?

Well the only C7 units they have are actually laptops as far as I can see... which is interesting in its own right! If you want to play/stream video or TV I would strongly suggest that you look for a unit that has a C7 processor at 1.2 Ghz or above and that uses the CN700 or CX700M graphics chip. These will give excellent video performance for sure. But you will need to build your own Unichrome Pro drivers from the sources on the Viaarena site.