Cheap Linux Development Hardware, In Spades

An anonymous reader writes "I was happy when I saw this $160 PPC NAS development system two days ago. I was surprised to notice this this $157 x86 router development hardware yesterday. And I'm floored to see this$199 MIPS thin client development system today." (Read on for more.)

"

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.'"

Comments

Re:Did I miss something?

[wscott]

How much electricty do you think that old celeron-400 uses in a year? In many places that little box will pay for itself in very quickly.

BTW: You want to use ipcop (version 1.4.0 just released!) instead of Smoothwall.

Re:Did I miss something?

[tigersha]

The Celeron is noisy. Which is the secondary reason I dumped a Celeron for a WRAP. Just today, in fact.

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!)

diskless nas server for $169? how about an xbox...

[aderusha]

new xboxes are selling for $150, and you can get them used in most places for $100. if you have a USB memory stick (who doesn't), a rental of "007: Agent Under Fire", "MechAssault", or "Splinter Cell" and a 10 minute soldering job can have you modded up in a jiffy (google for "xbox tsop flash").

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:Did I miss something?

[0x0d0a]

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?

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.