I was planning on using a Compact Flash to IDE adapter. It should give me more throughput than a USB key, right? And they would be swappable as well.. Maybe I'll put the base system (freedos, unix equivelant) on the Compact Flash, and the application itself on the USB thumb drive.. This way, the thumb drive would not even need to have a bootable partition.. It would just need a directory in there called like "FRC_2007" which the coproc would look in..
Does anybody know of a Unix equivalent to freedos? Something where I could still easily call up a serial port, or look into the filesystem, but not have a whole window manager open?
Interesting stuff. I may have to test this on a VM before I actually buy a box, but this just looks pretty sweet.
And to add to the tank analogy: Yes, the tank is heavier, but only by 2-3 lbs at most. Our robot is underweight as is. Assuming we build a lightweight case (or buy a lightweight enclosure), it should be doable. I would personally rather us have a multifunction amazingly fast piece of machinery than a fly swatter
