The future! Look at the size of this tiny Linux PC, wouldja? It’s nary larger than a small apple. What’s crammed inside, you ask? A 300 MHz processor, 16MB of onboard flash memory, 64MB of SDRAM, and a 1GB CompactFlash card loaded with Red Hat Linux. On the outside, there’s a single USB port, VGA, Ethernet port, RS232 port, and mic and speaker plugs. The whole shebang’s powered by a 5V plug.
There’s also a “Space Wire” port, which is “a type of proprietary interface use by the ESA, NASA and JAXA when the Cube actually goes into space,” according to PC Pro. Space! Apparently this thing’s built for intergalactic computing and has been developed for controlling various devices and networks aboard spaceships.
So how can you get your very own Space Cube? They’ll be sold on the Star Dundee website “once a few technical issues have been ironed out” according to PC Pro and will likely retail for as much as £1,500 ($2,769). Yeeouch. Might as well buy a MacBook Air if you’re looking for an expensive computer with only one USB port.
Hopefully we’ll see a cheaper consumer version of the Cube without the Space Wire port since most of us don’t own any intergalactic networking equipment…yet.
