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Small Footprint PCs?

Posted by Cliff on from the the-smaller-the-better dept.

Gameface asks: "I am looking for the smallest system I can find, in quantity, for my company. We need thousands of these systems, and I'd like to ask the Slashdot community what they'd recommend. Looking for the tiniest footprint for: Case, Motherboard, CPU, RAM, HDD, Serial Port, (2) 10/100 ports. No video required, no sound, all access will be via console (serial port). No OS, just a bare piece of hardware that I can load the OS onto the HDD. I'd really like to find something with SIMMS so we can upgrade the RAM if we need to. And of course, price is very much an issue. Thanks."

4 of 62 comments (clear)

  1. Net4501 seems to fit the bill by earthy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If you are not too concerned about processorperformance, you might want to look at Soekris Technologies' Net4501 or Net4521. It is not very expandable, but seems to fulfill your requirements nicely. More information is at Soekris' website. Other options would be the PC104 series of modules... but you'd have to find your own enclosures.

  2. Blades by quintessent · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Do a search for "blade server."

    A blade is a computer on a board. You can put multiple blades in one case and have them share power supplies. I think Compaq sells them, among others.

    This is a way to get them very dense and lower in power consumption (which also lowers air conditioning bills), but as a previous poster pointed out, small footprints come at a price.

    --
    Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
  3. oQo by Kraft · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Not _really_ what you want (it has video, and im not sure about upgradability), but fcuk this little ripper looks nice! Most like it's going to be launched later this year.

    It was covered on /. some time ago.

    --

    -Kraft
    Live and let live
  4. Soekris, about the size of a piece of Toast by jsimon12 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    http://www.soekris.com/

    These are great little PC's the boards are about the size of a piece of toast, with the case they are about the size of 2 pieces of toast, they only use 800 milliamps at 12 volt (if I remember right), have no moving parts, serial console and 3 network ports, and a CF slot for the disk. I have been using one with a IBM microdrive and OpenBSD as a border router for about a year now, and it works great.