what are these?

[Dubb]

I was poking around http://www.orbitmicro.com looking for some xeon coolers, and on the front page, I spot These

I'm confused... how does this work, you drop one of those things in a (pci-x?) slot and you have another computer in a computer? can the OS see the "expansion" computer? what are they used for?

 

[windraider]

well, it's a single board computer, which is just what it sounds like it is, a whole computer on a single board. i haven't seen one like that before, on the pci-x bus, but at my workplace we have a couple of those on an ISA backplane for a proprietary system we bought a few years back. i'm guessing something similar in this case? drop it on a pci-x backplane(do these even exist?) , it becomes your computer, and then you drop the rest of cards onto the backplane so they can communcate with it? as to your question, not too sure myself. basically, lets you save space instead of having a whole motherboard + backplane to stuff in a case, now you just have to stuff in a backplane and this board.. *shrugs*
anyone have more info, would be interested in it myself.

Cheers

 

[imported_Kiwi]

Although I haven't run across any in a few years, there were enclosures consisting of just a massive backplane of ISA and/or EISA slots in which several PC-on-a-board computers could be housed, sharing a power supply and some other support hardware. The Zenith PC's were mostly made that way. The photo you linked to looked like an EISA board, not PCI. These were used in special systems -- not for running ordinary applications.