At 4:53 PM +0100 1/8/04, 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.
>>  >
>>  > I wonder if it would sell? They would make nifty servers..
>>  >
>>  > They do similar things with the TV cards available now..
>>
>  > 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.

Both Apple and Orange Micro made boards like this starting about 15 
years ago for Macintosh machines. They were a very nice alternative 
to the emulations at the time, back when cycles weren't as plentiful 
as they are today (VirtualPC and SoftPC).

Mike
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