Lubomir Sedlacik wrote:

>On Thu, Jan 08, 2004 at 07:41:28AM -0800, Andy R wrote:
>  
>
>>--- Nicholas Jackson <nicholasj@ncafe.com> wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>I'm surprised that nobody has come out with a complete PC on a PCI
>>>card option, perhaps using a 2.5 disk. Then, with the proper
>>>interface built into the hardware, it might be possible to run a
>>>second machine inside of your main OS, without the huge performance
>>>hit of vmware, etc.
>>>      
>>>

>>This does exist actually. Sun did it. I have one sitting here at work
>>but I've never used it. It's got an AMD chip (K-6II I think) and 1
>>dimm slot. It's got a scsi interface to connect to a disk too. I'm not
>>sure what else, I'd have to find it... If this worked under NetBSD or
>>some other OS I'd like to use, that would be cool. I've never looked
>>into it...
>>    
>>
>
>it's called SunPCi (the older 486 and pentium models were SunPC
>Accelerator/SunPC).  for further details see the "PC Cards" section at:
>
>  http://sunsolve.sun.com/handbook_pub/Devices/Miscellaneous/MISC_TOC.html
>
>iirc, there are drivers for Windows (as a host OS) to deal with the disk
>image on the real disk and virtual drives support.
>  
>

Also there are newer things on the horizon - see

http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m0EIN/2001_July_30/76840726/p1/article.jhtml

for a 'pc in a 5.25" drive bay' solution.

When the nano-itx epia boards come out in the summer (Ghz intel in a 
12cm package, everything
on one board and draws about 25W) I expect  to see more of these. Or 
I'll be building my own - I quite
fancy a cluster in a tower case, and the average 400W PSU should run 
half a dozen along with RAID
quite happily :)