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By kuehnau
#19052
The "OS Card" would be a independant operating system that is installed or flashed onto a PCI-E card for computers.

A entire operating system such as Windows would come on one of these cards. Instead of booting and running your OS from your local hard drive, it would run most of the OS from the PCI-E card.

The card would be read only, protecting vital system files from malware such as trojans or viruses. A small number of system files that would require read and write functions would be copied to your local hard drive where they could be modified and read by the card.

What would this do? For starters it would make installing an operting system much easier. Instead of having to deal with CDs, DVDs and serial numbers a person would simply buy the card and put it in their computer.

I also believe that this would also put a serious dent in piracy of operating systems. Furthermore, it would free up a considerable amount of space on your hard drive. I also feel that it may even speed up system processes.

The OS Card could come with it's own independent CPU and Memory (RAM), which would completely remove the need for an operating system's system requirements. This would most likely speed up all other processes and events being run on the computer now that system processes are now no longer hogging PC resources.

Reward: A free OS Card
By ladybleustarr
#19707
I think that this would be a very efficient product to have, but persnonally I think you shoud patent this
idea and have total creative rights and make money. I think this is a brilliant idea.
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By Michael D. Grissom
#19713
IF the buss speed between the PCI-E card and CPU is roughly the same or higher than between the CPU and RAM this should work without degrading performance. The only problem that I can foresee is that the PCI-E card will become obsolete relatively soon. However, USB speed has just taken a major leap with a newly adopted standard (coming out soon) and is not likely to become obsolete soon. I'm thinking that a USB connected solid state HDD emulator (USB/SSD) might be better as well as more transportable should your computer die or be upgraded to a laptop? And, these USB/SSD units already exist for the purpose (Intrex, Best Buy, Circuit City, Tiger Direct, ect.). Do you see an advantage of the PCI-E over the soon to be available much faster USB/SSD that I missed? This is NOT my forte so, I may be missing a lot. :-?
By kuehnau
#19717
To be honest, it had something to do with several things. I know you can load and boot operating systems off of a SSD/USB. Let me list why I decided to choose PCI..

1. PCI-E isn't going obsolete. PCI-E 2.0 is still fairly new to the market. Most super market computers still go with a standard PCI or PCI-E interface. PCI-E 2.0 is also backwards compatible. Considering that PCI has been a pretty standard form of computer interfacing for more then a decade I doubt we will see it disappear any time soon.

2. Anyone with even standard computer knowledge, can load a OS on a memory card or USB stick. It isn't that difficult. Because of the nature of the media it may not be as secure, especially for piracy. Most standard PC users I know wouldn't know how to flash a PCI card, most don't even know they can flash their motherboard BIOS.

From a market standpoint, making it a media that isn't as easy to modify in your own home makes sense. You want Windows Vista? You buy the Windows Vista card. You want Windows 7? You buy the Windows 7 card. With a Flash drive it is easy enough to just download the software illegally and then load it up. I believe going with my route may make it harder for pirates. Even if it isn't impossible.

3. These sources of portable media, end up taking a beating when using it for an OS. There are a lot of budget netbooks out there that sport a low end version of Linux. A lot of people have been able to load "Micro XP" off of a flash drive or USB drive. But as we all know, these forms of media have a much more limited read/write limit then a standard HD. I imagine running a standard OS off flash memory, using it like a standard computer daily would end up destorying the memory card's expected life cycle.

In all honesty, I don't understand why computer manufactures just haven't started just having the OS embedded on a chip built into the motherboard. I have see several different versions of embedded Windows XP and even Vista and they seem to run well. Yeah, in the end they would have to offer the choice between a OS before they buy it, but how often does a standard computer user bother switching an OS? My mother has stayed with the same OS on the same PC for years.
By Dibbes
#19964
How about having a Mobile phone connected wirelessly to a terminal? A standard terminal would only need firmware for a high-speed wireless connection.

I mean, everyone has their mobile with them nowadays, so now they would carry their whole desktop, with all personal files with them. A backup solution could be created online, as is happening now (optionally) at some providers in Europe.
By kuehnau
#19965
Dibbes wrote:How about having a Mobile phone connected wirelessly to a terminal? A standard terminal would only need firmware for a high-speed wireless connection.

I mean, everyone has their mobile with them nowadays, so now they would carry their whole desktop, with all personal files with them. A backup solution could be created online, as is happening now (optionally) at some providers in Europe.
I don't really understand what you are trying to say, or why you are responding to this thread in such a fashion, but I am going to go ahead and respond to it anyways.

Connecting wirelessly to a "terminal" has been possible for quite some time now, it's also known as "remote connecting". Through this process a person can connect to a active terminal or computer connected to the internet.

You can access file and even run some programs. One person was able to run "World of Warcraft" off their PSP by remote connecting to the PC that had the software and trying to run it from their PSP. They only got like .5 FPS, but they were able to do it.

This is fairly unrealistic though. For starters you still need a terminal to connect to, so this doesn't even have anything to do with the idea I first presented to the community here. You are still going to need a computer with an OS on it of some sorts.

Secondly, unless you have a unlimited data plan (which can be expensive) you can stand to loose a lot of money by remotely connecting to a terminal to access files, as you will be charged per the KB of data used, I check my bill online, on my phone for my SPRINT cell phone and it usually costs me around $5.00!

Thirdly, the average person is not going to need to remotely connect to a terminal to access files. Not only is the connection speed going to be slow, even on a 3G network, but what would the purposes be when most cell phones are media based technology to begin with? Why access music, movies or pictures from a remote terminal when you could just copy and paste them on to your phone to begin with?

I used to run a online game in the past. And when the server crashed and I was out of town, I used to remote connect to the several terminal to reboot the server and get the game up and going again. A friend of mine uses his cell phone to gain access to his website server through a remote connect. These cases are only a few of them I would consider why anyone would want or need to remotely connect to a terminal and once again, the average cell phone users most likely wouldn't need to do this. Not only wouldn't they need to do it, anyone who has done it in the past can tell you that it is usually a pain in the ass. I mean, if you need files that badly, why don't you just carry them on a mini USB thumb drive or something?

Finally, what I think you are thinking about, what you are trying to get at is also known as "Cloud Computing", in which a computer gains information (or the entire OS is run from!) the internet. Programs are stored on a central server and computer users access them from their cloud computer. This might be nice for some users, who have access to the internet, and who only do light computing, but the compatibility issues are there even if anyone tells you differently. Most of these cloud computers are run with some form of Linux or another.









In the future I'd prefer if people keep on topic of what I was originally discussing about the idea of an OS running off of a PCI based computer card in an attempt to not only deter piracy, but also to save on system resources and to lower or possibly even remove computer based system requirements for an OS. Thank you.
By Dibbes
#19966
I understand what you're trying to explain and yes, I agree it could be seen as somewhat off-topic. I apologize for that. However, what I was suggesting doesn't have anything to do with cloud computing or TSC.

What I basically meant:
- Take a client. The only thing this client needs is a processor, memory and a wireless card (let's leave it for the moment what standard of wireless it woul be), maybe a standard graphics card.
- Take a mobile phone wit a decent mobile processor (I know currently these aren't really up to spec yet) and a wireless conecion option on the same standard as the client.

When booting up the client, it will automatically connect to your mobile phone and load the OS of this, complete with your personal settings, though not all documents, pictures, etc. If we'd take a standard Intel or AMD x86 or x64 processor, you can run pretty much every OS on the market, whatever your flavour.

In this case, OS processing is done on the phone, freeing up resources on the machine. If a special driver is needed, for example a special graphics card, it's downloaded directly from the internet, either over a fixed line on the terminal or mobile, with the option of saving this driver for future use.

So instead of using a PCIe, use a mobile phone, with the added advantage of extreme mobility.

Again I apologize for being unclear earlier an I hope this was a little clearer. Neither did I wan't to hijack your thread or any of that sort. I read your post and expanded on it.
By inventortech41
#23502
I have this already, I made it a few years ago, I purchased a IDE to SD converter, I had at teh time one computer and 4 kids, one kid would crash the computer and the other 3 would be pissed off, so I got the converter, and installed the operating system on the SD cards, each kid had a card, they would go to the computer and slide their card in and boot the computer, when they were done, they took their card out and the next could put their card in and do their work or games or whatever kids do on the computer. if they crashed their card, I had a master cops I could dump back to the SD card from my laptop.
By kuehnau
#23503
First of all, I hear what you are saying now about the phone being used as the source for the operating system, but when you get down to it, wouldn't you really just end up using your phone as a mobile hard drive? Since I can already do that with my Android phone I really think it defeats the purpose. Also, what happens if you loose your phone? You can already carry "live" cds of Linux where you just put the disk in and run off the disk.

No, you didn't have what I was talking about, in the end you would still be using a form of re-writable hardware in order to run the operating system. using a SD or CF card has been around for awhile now and while CF cards offer speeds that are similar to the expensive sold state drives, they have limited read and write functions, to the point where you can actually kill the card off. You were simply using an adapter to connect a form of re-writable media to your PC using the PCI slot.

Let me also say that I don't believe PCI or PCI-E slots are going anywhere, even current modern computers are using it and a lot of standard cards still use that format in order to expand upon computers. The speed of PCI-E might increase (2.0, 3.0?) but I believe the format for adding cards to expand computer functionality will remain there for quite some time.

No, what I am talking about is a completely write protected PCI or PCI-E card that simply plugs into your computer that contains the entire OS for your desktop PC. Everything boots off of it. Any files that require read or write functions would be carried over to your hard drive or whatever it is you use. You want to switch or upgrade an OS? You simply swap out cards. The production costs for this might be a little more expensive then CD or DVD media based, but I think in the long run it'd be worth it. Like I said before, by adding more hardware to the card such as it's own independent CPU or ram, it'd serve as a way to speed up the computers processes.

I also think it'd be in the production's best interest to have some form of malware and viral protection on the card too. Being completely protected from processes running off the hard drive, it'd be harder for viruses to mess up antiviral software. I've had it happen a few times where a virus had complete control of my system, including my virus scanner.
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