William Chops Westfield wrote:
 > On Tuesday, Nov 18, 2003, at 09:48 US/Pacific, Neil Cherry wrote:

 >> Though I love using Linux I'm not so sure it's the right OS for my
 >> embedded project. Windows was definitely out of the question.

 > Why?  For something like a "home automation controller", you don't
 > necessarily need something "tiny."  A brand new PC can be had for
 > about $300, and give you enough HW resources to run hugely inefficient
 > software :-)  true, windows is expensive just for the OS.  but you
 > probably already have it.  Linux or freedos will work fine.  It's
 > REAL HARD to match the bang/buck of a commodity PC (and of course,
 > 3-generation old PCs can be plucked from select trash cans...)
 > (available: 90Mhz Pentium I system, HDD, CD, 14inch SVGA monitor.
 > MSDOS6.22,
 > W3.1, W95 'update'. Works fine.  Free.  Buyer pays postage.  note that
 > it's probably not WORTH the postage...  Getting to the point where it's
 > not worth the space it's taking.  Sigh.)

We thought of that too, the original HCS & HCS II were ucontroller
boards that were meant to run without the PC (1985 - 1992, at the time
a very expensive device for 1 time costs). Part of the goals for this
project are to have a device that runs without a PC running 7x24, run
a long time on backup power and be as reliable as is reasonable. The
biggest problem with PC's is it moving parts tend to wear out fast.
I've gone through a lot of drives (CD's, hard drives & floppies) over
the years

--
Linux Home Automation         Neil Cherry        ncherry@comcast.net
http://home.comcast.net/~ncherry/               (Text only)
http://linuxha.sourceforge.net/                 (SourceForge)
http://hcs.sourceforge.net/                     (HCS II)

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