You may remember that, some time ago, I blogged about an interesting little computer curio called the Space Cube. Quite simply, it’s one of the smallest PCs in the world, with each side measuring around 2 square inches. I wrote that it looked cool, ran on a 300MHz processor and that it probably wouldn’t be sold outside of Japan, if at all.
Well, now, we’ve actually gone and got hold of one - the only Space Cube in the UK that’s running Linux, in fact. In the flesh it’s even more impressive than in pictures, inspiring awe and provoking disbelieving reactions across the PC Pro office. It’s actually quite difficult to comprehend just how small the PC is so, for your delectation, we’ve been taking pictures of the Space Cube next to some everyday objects.
So, we’ve established that it’s incredibly, impossibly small. But what’s inside? There’s a surprisingly capable CPU packed away in the tiny chassis with a top clock speed of 300MHz. It’s arrived with us clocked at a slightly more modest 200MHz,but a simple jumper built in to the case enable the processor to be clocked up to either 250MHz or the full 300MHz that it’s capable of.
It’s fair to say that the Space Cube isn’t overloaded with storage space, either. Sixteen megabytes of flash memory is included on-board, and the OS - a version of Red Hat, the popular Linux operating system - runs off a 1GB CompactFlash card that slots into the side of the Space Cube. There’s also 64MB of DDR SDRAM that, admittedly, doesn’t even match up to the lowliest of netbooks - let alone a desktop PC.
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.. The application for this is numerous..