On Tue, 24 Jan 2006 03:58:05 +0000, Glenn A. Heslop wrote:

I remember reading an article in one of the sailing rags on how to build
your own boat computer using a flash memory card...no spinning disk, no
fan...minimal opportunity for salt-water corrossion.

You certainly can do that, but there's good reason it isn't done often.
Flash memory has a limited number of read/write cycles. IOW it wears
out. This may or may not be a problem, depending on your needs.

There are dedicated solid state hard drives for this purpose, but they're
quite a bit more expensive.

Personally, I'd just buy a ruggedized computer, like a Panasonic Toughbook.

Matt O.