 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group SV24 Magnetic Barebone System John McNabb |
| This is not an advertisement but I just had to
spread the word. Spacewalker has brought out a new concept in small computers, called the Magnetic
Barebone System (MBS). Full details are available at their Web site:
http://www.spacewalker.com. The SV24 unit supports the Intel FCPGA Pentium 3 - 1000 MHz (370 type socket) CPU. You can also use a Celeron CPU. I call this "a computer in a shoe box". It comes in an aluminium box 190 mm wide, 160 mm high and 270 mm long. The box contains a complete ATX computer and all you have to do is plug in your monitor, PS/2 mouse, PS/2 keyboard and the power cord and away you go. It is so light you can pick it up and carry it under your arm. One of our SIG leaders bought one just to use at his meetings. The motherboard is a Flex ATX form only 178 mm by 190mm. There are 2 IDE ports, Ultra DMA 33/66/100 mode and PIO mode 4. Being so small, there is only room inside for one hard drive and a CD reader/writer or a DVD drive. There is room for one 3.5-inch floppy drive. The BIOS is Award PnP DMI 2.3 with 2 MB Flash memory. The memory is two DIMM 168 pin sockets, which can take up to 512 MB of PC100/PC133 SDRAM. The on-board video is a Savage 4 graphics engine. The on-board sound is VIA with AC '97 CODEC. There are composite and Svideo out for a TV set, four USB ports, two IEEE 1394 ports (Firewire) and one RJ45 port (10/100) for your network. There are three cooling fans inside the case. For anyone with an older computer, this box would be a great network add-on to upgrade your system. All you need is a switch box to connect your mouse, keyboard and monitor to both computers. This means that all of your USB and Firewire hardware can be used on both computers. This will save space if you only have a small desk and you will not have to buy a capture card for your DV camera. There is also one spare PCI slot for a SCSI card or a TV tuner like the one in my photo. The price of this shoe box you ask? Well you are looking at a GRAND plus, depending what hard drive and memory etc you want in it. It is still a cheap upgrade and you can still keep your old system intact. The Spacewalker Web site also lists other models in the MBS range. Photos are courtesy of Centre Com in Sunshine: telephone (03) 9311 3682. |
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Reprinted from the July 2002 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
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