SBC Questions

[rtgwbmsr]

I have a few questions about SBC's (Single Board Computers)

1) What do they do?
2) What do they plug into? They all seem to have funky PCI64 or ISA looking connectors on them.
3) How do they work? Sorry for the vagueness.
4) How are they recognized by an OS? Each as a separate computer, a single computer with multiple processors, etc.

Thanks for the help...google turned up the same old uninformative thing and people trying to sell me stuff.

[TheQuirk]

1) They do what a normal computer does. They're just old and small. They're used in idustrial machines (such as watercut meters) that need to process data.

2) They plug into PCI and ISA slots.

3) They work like a normal computer, except things like RAM and the proc are soldered on. Some of them have a lot of parallel or serial connections so they can output data to different parts of a machine.

4) I'm not sure about this part, but I think they just act as if they're stand-alone computers and can be controlled through special software (drivers . . .)

P.S
Why do you need to know this stuff? (Just nosy!)

[rtgwbmsr]

I've seen them for sale, and I was just curious as to what they do.

Another question: What would happen if I bought one and plugged it into my PCI slot?

[ November 25, 2002: Message edited by: The Muffin Man ]

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by X11 / BOB: l33t h4x0r:

I think voidmain knows about this subject

Yeah, I'm an expert because I bought a bread board and stuck some LEDs in it and wired it up to my parallel port and wrote a program to play christmas music which light up the LEDs in concert with the PC speaker music.    I am interested in the stuff but that's the extent of my expertise and I just haven't had time (or the aptitude) to get into it like I would like to.