Hi-
As per moving parts wearing out - there are quite a few cheap PC type
systems with flash drives, and no moving parts available now.  See
http://www.solarpc.com/, for example.
David

Neil Cherry wrote:

> 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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