CF & TMFS, horrible combination and more...

Well, after a good time waiting and trouble, I gave up currently with using a CF as a replacement for the HDD. Its installing everything perfectly, but it wont start to boot, so the whole thing is stuck at BIOS level, giving me errors and driving me nuts. Google is not a good help either...

I havent found a way around it, except for using a mobile CD-rom drive who does the trick fortunately. This also means that if you have a system pre-installed on a CD-rom it will work fine. Thank god Torvalds knew that any media is usable for a pc system.

My reprap is currently in repair, the Y-belt went loose (again) and I didnt had the time to repair it. More busy with school than using the reprap lately.

School is considering to buy a reprap for drilling PCB's quickly and fast. Anyone got experience with it, and some howto guide? I am thinking about drilling holes & lanes, and maybe silkscreening it too (with a finepoint marker). Since I dont know python, it will be very hard for me to write some code for it. I hate to get my hands dirty in toxic material ;)

I also noted that my postings are listed on the great wall of reprap related blogs. Good to know for when I am posting more...

TMFS is working... Now I need to install stuff.

Its finally working :) I thought it never would, but its really there. The machine is currently powered by a 12V backup battery, only needed to solder 2 wires for the power. Its powered by a car battery, but I soldered a cigarette power supply on it.

This is my current setup. As you can see its currently installing windows XP on the SSD (Solid State Disk).

The setup is as follows:

In the bottom you can see the power device, together with a red and black wire. There is also a white wire, but thats purely for when its used in the car. The device powers the motherboard (shown on the right) with 1.6Ghz of power. Its pure overkill, but who cares?

In the top is a CF drive, I could also use a CD-player or something else, but I found out that this is the best way to handle bumpy roads.

The total costs are classified at this moment, but I can tell you that this is just the core... It will contain lots more. The final system will be using ubuntu linux, because the keys for vista and windows 7 are not that cheap.

The box that this setup is on will be my main box, only need to find a way to get everything screwed in there.

New project: TMFS

Its been a long time since I posted something, but it doesnt mean I am not working on making new projects that do concern the reprap.

I am currently working on a brand new project called the "Transportable Multi Functional System". I would call it the pc-in-a-box, but TMFS did sound a bit better for me. At this current moment the cost for it all is estimated at 250 euro barebone (without casing), and will run on a car battery. Its a complete server with a CF-card for the hard drive. I am not sure how much power it actually will drain from the car, because I havent checked it yet with a multimeter, but I try to keep it as low as possible. If people want one too, be patient, maybe I will sell clones.

I am sure that it cant beat a mini-laptop (its too expensive), but it is suitable for the following things:

1. Sentry turret for paintball/airsoft (am planning on building this one)

2. Reprap managment system (just put it in the back of your car and let it control the reprap, while you are making new items in the passenger seat and sending it to the back)

3. Wardriving (laptops in the front of the car are a rare sight, and can easely be spotted by cops. With the casing around it they cant blame you of wardriving, even if you open it).

4. Webserver-on-the-road (Just drive, and everyone with iphone/laptop can connect to it on the road)

The complete prototype that I am building will contain the following parts in a hard casing:

barebone:

1. A special 12V DC-DC converter

2. 4gig CF harddrive

3. mini ATX motherboard with 2gig ram

extra:

4. Wireless

5. GPS unit

6. Bluetooth

7. Arduino

8. Custom software

If someone can make a good logo to put on the case, then I would gladly appreciate it if you could send it to me.