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Using a USB key instead of a hard drive
ChadTower:
It would end up costing way more in SSD storage than you'd probably be willing to pay, versus the "I had it in a drawer" cost of PATA.
vrf:
True, but things are moving really quickly now. Prices are going to start falling once these things are put in laptops.
http://www.gearlog.com/2007/03/samsung_ssdanother_one.php
hbm*rais:
--- Quote from: ChadTower on March 28, 2007, 11:03:22 am ---
--- Quote from: hbm*rais on March 28, 2007, 10:57:55 am ---1. Less noise, heat, power consumption. The whole system is already running from RAM, if you can turn off your monitor, you can probably leave the CPU running 24/7, ready for action. No boot time at all, just turn on the monitor and play.
--- End quote ---
The drive doesn't consume that much power. If you took out the drive and then kept your machine running 24/7, you'd probably end up using more power than you started with. Plus you're seriously shortening your machine lifespan.
--- End quote ---
I don't mean a pen drive based system running 24/7 would necessarily use less power than a HDD based one turned on on demand. I mean it would be a more practical one. Would you like to wait your DVD player or microwave oven to boot before you could use it :D?
As AdvanceCD is based on a very striped down version of linux, with no background processes using the CPU constantly, I'm pretty confident a solution based on a pen drive and a cool'n'quiet AMD processor would use *very* little power when just idleing on the frontend.
As for lifespan of the machine (as a whole), I would prefer to have a diskless machine running 24/7 than a HDD beeing turned on and off daily.
At the end of the day, this is more about turning your cabinet into a instant-on device, like a TV, than about saving power, producing less noise or heat.
ChadTower:
Arcade machines weren't instant-on devices. I see what you're saying, but for someone going for an original appearance, arcade games have boot times. They always did once they went past pure TTL architectures.
hbm*rais:
Oh, the boot times are there! You'll have one each time you load a rom, complete with an original boot screen ;).
:cheers: