any hardware geeks interested in this?

[David P. Schwartz]

I have a buddy who got one of the Sabre boxes and brought it over to set it up.  We never found a way to get into the BIOS.  Other than
that, it IS a nice little box.  Great for typical office needs.

That "SpaceShuttle" box is the same price as the Sabre without a CD drive.  It's smaller, and they're almost identically configured
except the Sabre allows two more PCI cards and has a PC-Card slot built-in.

One other thing to worry about with these small chassis machines is the heat generated by 7200 RPM HDDs.  I've got a couple of "Book
PCs" that are similar in size to the Sabre but have no extra card slots.  The vendor advised against using 7200 RPM HDDs due to the heat
they generate.  So I put in 20GB laptop HDDs.  They're way smaller, quieter, use less power, and are very rugged. With a little work,
you could probably fit two of them into a 3-1/2" drive bay.  They are a tad slower, but for typical uses that won't be very noticeable.

-David

Steven Martindale wrote:

> The one I've been thinking of is right next to it on the shelf. That being
> the FIC Sabre 1815, here's an article where someone made use of it:
>
> http://www.vboston.com/DepressedPress/Content/AfterHours/Articles/SlimPC/FIC
> Sabre.cfm
>
> That loads a bit slowly, so heres the official page:
>
> http://www.fica.com/products/systems/Databook/Sabre1815/Sabre1815.stm
>
> Slap a Via CIII processor in that and one could have a small, quiet, and
> acceptably fast system. I could put two of those on my desktop in only just
> a little more space (width-wise) that my current Linux box.
>
> This little box has both USB and Firewire ports, and a PCMCIA card slot
> (type 2). Three PCI slots (two full height, one half height), two slots for
> up to 512 MB of memory, and okay not much disk space with only one exposed
> 5.25 bay and a single internal 3.5 bay (there's a 3.5 exposed bay but the
> floppy drive comes as part of the package deal). Only thing is I misread
> the price first time I saw it at Fry's. Thought the sign said $199 so when
> I noticed the online shops averaging $300 I got pretty excited. Then I got
> back into Fry's and noticed that the actual sign for the Sabre's was $299.
>
> But I still might talk myself into buying one.
>
> Steven,