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Used a board with this the other day. Boots to a sort of GUI splash page that gives you the choice of Skype, a browser, or the OS. If you do not move the mouse etc. it will boot to the OS in 30seconds. Not sure how you would boot XBMC on this, the LinuxBIOS project might be a better way to go?
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The biggest problem I can see (among other things) with this is the openGL stuff. I am pretty sure it is not implemented in splashtop, and I am quite certain LinuxBIOS does not support openGL either - it hardly has video support at all.
I think the best way to go is to just make a stripped down linux install. It really doesn't take that much time to boot up - especially when compared to devices like TIVO.
I did a minimal install of Ubuntu, and managed to get XBMC running on it in under 500MB of space. I didn't even try to save space. It wouldn't surprise me if, with a little work, it could take up half the size.
If startup times were that big of an issue, I would probably focus more on getting standby working with XBMC - seems quite a bit easier, and a little more practical than other solutions.
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finas
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If it really takes 30 seconds to boot, then they are lying! 5 seconds would really be a dream.
- splashtop is a linux distro. openGL or any other needed package could be added, including video drivers. Not as easy as apt-get install or emerge or any other package manager, but I think it could be done with not to much effort.
- I still like the idea of botting from onboard flash, with a nice bios integration. It starts to look less to a pc and more to a multimedia device.
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finas
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BLKMGK:
I googled some more on the boot time subject and consensus is that it takes about 10 seconds from hitting the power button to being ready for use!
are you sure about the 30 seconds ?
Anyone else have tryed splashtop ? It's also included on some asus notebooks.
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Gamester17
Team-XBMC Forum Moderator
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I looked into SlashTop quickly when I first heard about it a few months back, as I understand it the SlashTop distro is not fully open source, nor do they allow you to modify it (in order to put whichever software packges you like in it and flash thoese motherboards with, like for example XBMC and the library packages that XBMC is dependent on). Otherwise one of those platforms could possible make a nice reference hardware for XBMC.
...oh, and the SlashTop discro does not yet have 3D device drivers for NVIDIA nor ATI.
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Idea is great but too few mobos supporting it and existing ones are very expensive
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finas
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Asus will release this month another splashtop enabled motherboard: the M3N-HD HDMI, that will be based on the upcoming 8200 chipset from nvidia. The chipset has integrated VGA et all, and will probably be priced bellow 100$ ( as it is usual with these all-in-one boards )
If the price tag is meet, it's quite a dream, because the 8200 is able to do HD ( superior to 7050 and 7150 ). Add a cheap x2 cpu 1gb ram or less, take care with the price of the rest of the components ( case, dvd-player, hdd ?, hdmi cable ) and sudently a below 150$ system is possible.