A tale of two Pico-ITX mods
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted Dec 4th 2008 12:43PM
posted Dec 4th 2008 12:43PM
As William Gibson once wrote, "the street finds its own uses for things." Of course, the future he envisioned was populated by cut-throat characters with names like Dex Cowb0t, mercenary-types who made their money the only way they knew how: with custom cyberspace decks, hopped up on designer drugs like "splurge" and "spazz." What he never understood was that the only true measure of a technology is its ability to aid a bored populace in its pursuit of nostalgia and novelty. And by these standards, the Pico-ITX board might be one of the most important technological breakthroughs of its time (roughly 2007-2010 CE). Where would the hackers and case modders of our humble era be if it weren't for this guy? They wouldn't be shoving PCs into old Game Boy cases, that's for sure. Case in point: the Linksys Bt320g seedbox project places VIA's EPIA PX10000G mobo and a 320GB HDD in an old Linksys shell (and a 400GB HDD in a second router). The man responsible doesn't say whether or not this one was intended to thwart they copyright police in the event of a search and seizure, but on the other hand we're assuming that he isn't going to be seeding OpenOffice on the thing either. If retro computing's your bag, we've found a Timex Sinclair ZX81 case mod that should bring you considerable joy. Unfortunately the membrane keyboard's been disabled, but if you don't mind using a USB keyboard with a machine that originally sported 1KB RAM (at a whopping 3.25MHz), you might want to hit the read link and see how it's done.
Read - Linksys BT320G case mod
Read - Sinclair ZX81 turned into PC
Read - Linksys BT320G case mod
Read - Sinclair ZX81 turned into PC
When they stick one in a 16K Spectrum I'm sold. I'll take rubber over membrane any day!
I prefer to ride bareback, but to each his own.
Awesome. Awesome! AWE-
"Unfortunately the membrane keyboard's been disabled..."
*goes home*
(just kidding, spectacular mod)
> Unfortunately the membrane keyboard's been disabled
That's lame.
They removed the cool part... sorta like how ppv porn in hotels often has the best parts removed.
Wake me when someone makes a Sinclair ZX81 that runs Linux and uses the membrane keyboard.
How often do you watch hotel ppv porn?
All it needs is a functioning keyboard and tiny screen.
If you want to have a small screen and get the keyboard working, you'd probably want to use a gumstix board instead. Easier to hack that kind of stuff with one of those. Although then you'd only be able to run linux.
gotta love those ITX boards. remember getting a nano ITX board back in 2003 from inside a Gateway. modders dream.pico ITX looks even sweeter.