| Been there, done that |
Jan. 14, 2006
 A team of two graduate students studying industrial design at Purdue University has won the "$50,000 Judge's Award" in Microsoft's Next Generation Windows PC Design Competition for a PC concept called the "Bookshelf" computer. The competition challenged competitors to "Envision how innovative next-generation Windows-based PC hardware design will enable the digital lifestyle at home, at work, and on the go."
(Click here for larger view of the Purdue Bookshelf computer)
The Purdue students' Bookshelf computer concept is based on a set of modules which are placed together like books on a bookshelf. The core of the system is a 7-inch cube, which contains the main processing electronics, to which modules containing hard drives, audio/video functions, and other expansion capabilities can be added -- much like placing books on a bookshelf.
The Purdue Bookshelf computer PC concept expands modularly
(Click image to enlarge)
"Up until now, personal computer designs seemed to be based on the issues of processing speed or performance rather than the user's convenience," said graduate student Sungho "Oho" Son, one of the two team members.
 Deja Bookshelf
Interestingly, back in 1983, Silicon Valley startup Ampro Computers Inc., a well-known pioneer in the embedded computing market and inventor of the PC/104 and EBX single-board computer standards, was founded based on an innovative personal computer concept it called the "Bookshelf Computer" (shown at the right).
Ampro's Bookshelf Computer was conceived as a compact (7.3 high x 6.5 wide x 10.5 inches deep) cube-like, all-in-one system that could fit comfortably on a bookshelf, along with book-sized expansion modules that would provide additional disk drives and other peripheral functions. The expansion blocks were to be interfaced to the main computer core via the system's SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) bus.
The original Bookshelf Computer Series 100 system was based on a 4 MHz Z80-based single-board computer (the "Little Board") running the CP/M operating system. It boasted a hefty 64 KB (that's kilobytes!) of DRAM memory, along with 4 to 32 KB of EPROM memory. It came with one or two built-in 400 or 800 KB capacity 5.25-inch floppy disk drives, and sported a pair of RS232 serial ports, and a parallel printer port. It also had a somewhat revolutionary expansion bus -- SCSI -- through which you could add a 5 or 10 MB SCSI hard drive.
  
Circa 1983-1984 Ampro Bookshelf Computer Series 100 (Z80-based) and Series 200 (80186-based) data sheets
(Click each image to enlarge)
Ampro later introduced a second generation Bookshelf Computer, the Series 200, based on an 8MHz 80186 microprocessor, which was a superset of the 8088 CPU used in the original IBM PC. The system bundled IBM PC-DOS, and had similar features to the Series 100, except that it included a whopping 512 KB of DRAM and could be purchased with a built-in 10 MB SCSI hard drive. For office applications, it included T/Maker III.
Shortly after Ampro began shipping the Series 200, Microsoft introduced a desktop software bundle it called the "Microsoft Bookshelf." Ampro subsequently informed Microsoft that its "Microsoft Bookshelf" product name infringed on Ampro's "Bookshelf Computer" trademark, resulting in Microsoft purchasing the rights to the Bookshelf trademark from Ampro.
(Click here for further information)
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