Cheap Linux Development Hardware, In Spades 20
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All 3 are full of open-source goodness, and for a change the manufacturers actually *want* you to do development on them. The MIPS box even comes with schematics and the board layout.
This should be good news for everyone who hates replacing ancient fans, memory, and dying SCSI drives in their resurrected Sun, SGI, Apple, DEC, etc. workstations. Or anyone who's significant other dislikes them installing alternative operating systems on perfectly good consumer electronics.
A quote by well-known open source developer Erik Andersen about the Kuro Box (NAS device linked to above) sums it up pretty well:
'The great thing about a product like the Kuro Box is it gives me complete control so I can adapt the system as my needs change. Unlike single purpose devices that soon end up in the trash, the Kuro Box is built using 100% Open Source software. This gives me the power to customize, upgrade and enhance my Kuro Box to make it do whatever I can imagine.'"
Re:Did I miss something? (Score:3, Informative)
BTW: You want to use ipcop [ipcop.org] (version 1.4.0 just released!) instead of Smoothwall.
Re:Did I miss something? (Score:1)
Re:Did I miss something? (Score:1)
Nothing. Nobody said you shouldn't do that, if you so desire.
These systems are for those who don't have an old celeron-400 sitting in the corner. That you think everyone does just speaks of ignorance.
(Mines an i-opener, and its sitting on the spare desk behind me, in parts. I'd love to get it working one of these days, but instead
Re:Did I miss something? (Score:4, Insightful)
What's wrong with me digging that old celeron-400 out of the corner, installing smoothwall on it, and shoving it away in the cupboard to serve out it's days?
Well, nothing, obviously, and many of us would no doubt do that rather than (or as well as ;) spending money. But... this little box draws no more than 5W power [pcengines.ch]. That's certainly an argument my significant other can understand at electricity-bill time...
Re:Did I miss something? (Score:4, Informative)
The Celeron has mechanical parts that can fail. The harddisks pop. The fan goes boom. The CPU fan stops dead in its tracks. Which is the secondary reason I dumped a Celeron for a WRAP. Just today, in fact.
And the WRAP uses almost no current as opposed to the Celeron sucking lots of juice for components Video, HDD, 2 serial ports, a printer a boatload of other crap that is not used in a router. Not to mention the extreme waste of heat in a modern PC case.
The WRAP is a simple dedicated machine that does one job well (I hope, it hasn't arrived yet!)
Re:Did I miss something? (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree with this as I have a celeron doing the very same thing. However I can see the point of having a specialized box as a router in regards to power usage which affects heat output and also the size. My celeron is not that hot and I might be able to underclock and undervolt it to a lower speed. Unless I add airflow to my clost, putting the whole thing in a closet is a no go. The heat would probably kill the power supply since heat and power supply effiency can vicously cycle out of control. My system is a all steel case circa 1998 and I can not justify spending aprox $50 for a smaller easier to keep cool case. If I am gonna spend the $50, I might as well buy up and get something smaller & newer.
I also see the possible need for a low cost computing appliance. Yes a linux appliance. Check out the first link to Buffalo Technology's Kuro Box. It as room for a hard drive and you can turn it into a NAS box or in my case I was thinking for making a application server with LAMP and doing a couple surveys & demos to see if the local businesses might be interested.
Re:Did I miss something? (Score:3, Informative)
Nothing -- doing so is great if you just want a personal server/firewall.
It's less good if you want to build and sell small-run embedded systems of some sort. These boxes can be purchased, have a system slapped on them, and be resold.
Re:Outdated? (Score:2)
Re:Outdated? (Score:1)
It's an MPC8241, that's a 603e processor.
Nothing special, but it looks nice and is cheap.
LK
Microsoft and Trusted Computing (Score:4, Insightful)
What about a media center (Score:2, Interesting)
It would need VIVO, an MPEG2 decoder, DVD-Rom(RW?), large IDE harddrive, reasonable processor (1GHz?), a serial port for interacting with RS-232 connectors on cable and sattelite boxes, and a small form factor (ITX).
I checked out h
diskless nas server for $169? how about an xbox... (Score:5, Informative)
the difference? this $169 nas box has a 200MHz PPC processor, 4MB flash, 64MB RAM, 10/100 ethernet, 1 USB port and 1 serial port. on the xbox, you get a 700MHz Intel x86, 64MB RAM, 10/100 ethernet, 4 usb ports, but no flash or serial. to make up for the flash you get an 8GB HD which you can replace at will, a DVD drive, and video output (the NAS box has none).
it will run linux all the same, along with running xbox media center (http://www.xboxmediacenter.de) and loads of emulators. oh yeah and it plays xbox games too. check out http://www.xbox-scene.com for tutorials and forums.
Re:diskless nas server for $169? how about an xbox (Score:2)
Re:diskless nas server for $169? how about an xbox (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:diskless nas server for $169? how about an xbox (Score:2)
Yeah, I've heard the rumors that Microsoft loses money on every Xbox they sell -- that might even have been true once.
But think how much more money they lose for every one they make and don't sell.
There are plenty of sub-$100 linux appliances out there if you want to hack on something that wasn't originally intended to be hacked on.