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Cheap Linux Development Hardware, In Spades
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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.'"
Stuff like this is very encouraging -- the commercial viability of Linux and Linux-compatible hardware will help prevent Microsoft and Trusted Computing from ruining the computing experience for us tech-savvy types. And Linux's viability help ensure the viability of other operating systems.
BTW: You want to use ipcop (version 1.4.0 just released!) instead of Smoothwall.
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. That's certainly an argument my significant other can understand at electricity-bill time...
This is where the serious fun begins.
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!)
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
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?
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.
I would still like to see a box that has the capabilities for a TIVO like device for under $300. The need for a "TV Tuner" seems to be dying off as many people (In fact most in Canada) have either Digital Cable or Satellite, meaning a separte box in necessary for tuning anyways.
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 hardware available to do this from a local store and was about to get it down to about ~$500CDN ~$400US with one of those VIA boards.
"Take that Lisa's beliefs!" - Homer Simpson
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.
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.
May we never see th
your idea intrigues me, can I sub ... errr, I mean can you get me a couple hundred modded x-boxes by the weekend? Oh yeah, would you please make sure to include a cheque for the difference in my power bill over the life of the product. ;-)
"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley