Re: Raspberry Pi5 versus other cheap Intel based boxes for general computing

On 4/3/2024 7:43 AM, Martin Brown wrote:

N100 looks quite capable. My only concern is the whiny fans on these very small enclosures. Fan noise increases rapidly with rpm and tiny fans don't move much air. SFF is as small as I like to go.

Yeah, I have a few i7 NUCs that are just sitting around looking for a use.
Too small for the amount of power they can dissipate.  And, I know that
installing a disk would only make things worse.
But, USFFs can be good for single tasks (i.e., as appliances).  Using
an SSD (or PXE-boot) usually eliminates the need for a fan.

My 20 year old PC upstairs still runs xfree and the old audio system (before Alsa), and works still perfectly with my satellite stuff.
Is an AMD 486.

 I haven't got much left that is quite that old. One machine from 2003 that is kept mainly because it has a real parallel port needed for some bitbanging programmers that I still very occasionally need to use.

I keep an older laptop with parallel/serial and FLOPPY for similar reasons.
And, a Compaq Portable 386 w/expansion chassis for a full length coprocessor
that I (rarely!) need to access (ISA bus).

My spellchequer today wants to turn you into Panatella must be all the food over the Easter Holidays that's affecting it!