Well, Intel has come out with the board I've been waiting for... The
Intel D945GSEJT is a low-power, slim (less than 1" tall), fanless Atom-based motherboard that maintains a
price of less than $120! Unexpectedly, the power controller is on-board so all you need is a wall-wart that supplies 12V DC and you're good to go!
So you take the D945GSEJT, add a SODIMM, an SSD (to keep the power and heat down), an inexpensive
enclosure, a cheap
wall-wart and you have about a 15 watt computer! Add a
PCI riser card and a
little more power (if necessary) and and you can plug in one PCI card (depending on how much heat the PCI card generates, you may have to add a fan at this point as well -- the board does have fan support).
Unlike its predecessors, this board does not have a serial port on the back, but it does have two COM port headers, so you can add a serial port if your weather station requires one. If your weather station is USB based, you’ve got three USB ports on the back, which works out perfectly for a mouse, keyboard and your weather station. Utilizing the USB headers on-board allows up to total of seven USB ports.
Now to find the time to replace my existing
D945GCLF with this board to stop the fan whine that’s currently in the living room...
Roak
