Terapin Mine nearing market?
By
Mike Tomkins
(Tuesday, June 26, 2001 - 13:14 EDT)
Steve's Digicams suggests we may not have long to wait for TeraOptix's portable storage device...
We spotted a news item over at Steve's Digicams which suggests that TeraOptix's Terapin Mine storage device may soon be on the market. Dallas-based TeraOptix, a subsidiary of Singaporean company Serial System Ltd., announced the Terapin Mine just before the Consumer Electronics Show which ran from January 6th to 9th of this year in Las Vegas, NV.
The Mine has some interesting features that set it above similar offerings from TeraOptix's competitors... The unit has a PCMCIA card slot through which adapters for a range of media can be accepted, allowing data to be copied to a built-in 10GB+ hard disk drive. USB master and slave, and 10MB Ethernet ports provide for external connectivity, and the PCMCIA slot can also accept a standard or wireless LAN card, or a modem card - allowing for data to be transferred to/from the device by USB, Ethernet, wireless LAN or dial-up.
The device, which runs on Linux and includes the ability to automatically upgrade firmware, also has connections for stereo audio out and composite video out, as well as a built-in microphone - meaning that as well as storing your digicam images, you can use it as an MP3 player, voice recorder, and for playing video presentations. Power can come from either an AC adapter or batteries, and a 15 x 4 character LCD display combined with 6 buttons are used to control all of the many features.
The last information we had was that the Terapin Mine would ship midway through the year at a price of 'around $499' inclusive of a 10GB hard drive; Steve's Digicams' item points to retailer VideoGuys.com which is now listing the device as 'coming soon' at the same price. Hopefully this is a sign that it will soon be on the market, and not just a repeat of the previous price/availability information...
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