[aprssig] RE: Single Board PC

[KC2MMi]

Tyler-

> Can anyone point to a source of single-
> board PC's with 2 serial ports, and sound
> card that comes with WIndows

Probably not. Serial ports have officially been obsoleted by all the major
vendors. While you can buy a which still supports one legacy serial port,
the computer makers just can't justify the cost of including TWO of them and
bumping out other ports that buyers want instead. Sound cards also are
obsolete, almost all of the computers sold in the past five years have
on-board sound chips. Again, a matter of cost. You might find a source of
legacy *boards* but whole computers with an OS? Good luck.

What you'll find on a new machine is one or no serial port, and an on-board
sound chip. I'd suggest you look for the cheapest system that matches this
and your other criteria, and then order serial port cards to add to them.
Depending on your source and quantity, the serial port cards will cost you
$5-10 each, and you'll save a lot more than that, compared to trying to find
the high-end systems that might ship with dual serial ports in them. A
single-board PC with dual serial ports? Gonna cost you, if you can find it.
They just aren't commodity goods any more in today's market.

Cheap new machines will probably ship only with Windows XP/Home, that's MS's
cheapest OS these days.

If you can live with older used machines, try calling leasing companies.
They usually have hundreds of "exact same" computers coming off 3-year
business leases, some of those might have different OSes if you don't need a
current one.