Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Industrial Mini PC Quick Fix

Whew,  It's been an interesting year.
I am still alive just haven't been doing many things that are a good fit for an entry on this blog.

Here's a quick project from a few months ago.

I wanted a PC that a, wouldn't take up much space b, I wouldn't really care about breaking and c, had an LPT port for left-over DIY interfaces with enough processing power to run their associated tools if I needed them. 
A compact old-school hardware hacking PC if you wish.

I ended up buying 3 of these industrial mini pcs for somewhere around $20 if memory serves.
2 wouldn't boot, one was fine.




They had a FabiaTech FB2530 motherboard with a Geode CPU running at 266Mhz, dual ethernet, dual serial (which are pretty useful too), lpt, usb. Fits an IDE laptop HDD or a CompactFlash card for storage.








The issue with the 2 that wouldn't boot ended up being bulging capacitors in the power supply board.



They both started working fine after replacement.

Sold the ones I didn't need so I got to keep one for free. I've used it for a few projects since though it's mostly just been sitting on my desk for the past 6 months.

On the bright side it's really small and isn't much of an eyesore.