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Recommendations for a Single Board Computer?
Lardmonster asks: "I'm looking for a Single Board Computer that's reasonably spec'd for performance, but low power (from a Wattage perspective!). I'd like to build a small machine to host NFS/Samba shares, store email, and run Slimserver. There are some nice-looking boards from Soekris, but they max out at 266MHz and have limited RAM. Can anyone recommend similar devices that are low-power, up to 500MHz, with IDE connector and have a SO-DIMM slot? Compatibility with i386 binaries is not necessary. Many places sell similar boards, but only in large quantities, and the prices are generally prohibitively high when they're publicized at all."
Probably VIA EPIA would do the trick. Maybe something like this:
VIA EPIA NL
Pick one up for cheap and use external usb devices. Should run you $100 for the device or less and $20-$50 for the external case for a drive. You don't need it to do much, so don't hurt yourself by looking too hard.
I take it that the mini-ITX stuff from Via et al is overkill / too big? If so, they are (hopefully) soon going to have nano-itx boards available that are more like traditional SBC's. http://www.mini-itx.com/ recently posted an article where one was spotted in the wild in Japan, so they might actually see light of day, finally. If you don't want to wait, there are a ton of SBC manufacturers that advertise in Linux Journal, surely one of them will do what you want. Pick up a copy of LJ and take a look.
Perhaps I don't understand your requirement for a 'single board' solution?
GPL Deconstructed
If this is just an attempt at reducing power usage, why not use an old mobo/processor and underclock the thing to death. You should be able to get an Athlon 64 to run at 500 MHz or so by scaling back the multiplier and FSB speed. You would likely not even need any fans, except possibly for the power supply. And even if this is not exactly the most optimal solution, the money saved in purchasing used, cheap hardware will more than offset the amount of extra electricity that this thing might take when compared to a real SBC.
Of course, if this thing is intended for a special application, such as a space-limited or power-limited use (in a car, or battery powered, etc.), then feel free to ignore me.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
is the answer.
eBay.
Search for "single board" and you'll find plenty. Buying direct is not really an option because, yes, they are expensive. Get them secondhand, after a company's already gotten their quantity discount. You can get almost any architecture and performance level.
I have been looking for similar reasons at this kind of thing. I think I am going to go for a Linkstation by Buffalo. It is a network attached storage device which has quite a lively hardware hacking community, mainly because it runs linux and is easily reflashable.
I also want to run the slimserver and there are details on how to run it on this hardware here (depending on whether you have the MIPS version or the PPC version). You can upgrade the hard drive (though not officially) or if you want you can also use external USB2 hard drives as it has a couple of USB ports.
If you want the officially hackable version of this box, they sell a thing called the Kuro Box and they actively encourage hacking it.
HTH
BJPirt
The 4801 soekris can have 256meg of ram and a 266 is plenty for nfs and samba . . . I didn't see anything in your post that negated the use of a soekris for what you are wanting? 266mhz is just fine for a file server for home use, 256mb ram is probably overkill, on the 4801 there is 44 pin udma33 interface (you can buy a converter if you want 40 pin or you can use the PCI slot and put your own card in if you want).
.and unless it's a beast You'll probably be happy with the soekris boxes . .and if not, put it up on ebay, I'll probably bid on it (or consider using it for other projects. A nerd that cant find a use for a soekris box needs to get rid of that girlfriend). . .)
I question whether you are looking in the wrong direction for what you are wanting to accomplish. You are looking for something to run drives for a streaming server which means you'll need a power supply for those too (which you won't pull off one of the low power sbc systems generally). Unless you just want to dump a single 2.5" drive in there, and in that case, again, the soekris 4801 would work just fine.
But, if that's still not your bag, stop looking at SBC's, get one of the low end nano VIA boards (the cheapest one has no fan on it already and relies on passive cooling), underclock it as far down as it'll go. You'll reduce your power draw and you'll also have a much cooler (lower in temperature) system and won't need additional case fans. All you'll need to do is hunt for your case that has the quiet psu and you can do what you please with it.
(I have a 4801 as a router/firewall device, and before using it there I tried it out as a file server using an old 10gb 2.5 I reclaimed from a laptop and it was quite peppy. The only thing you have listed in your descrip that I didn't try was the slimserver software . .
I mean looking at that Soekris board it looks perfect for you. I mean you don't need a processor that's that fast. After all it only has 3 100 mbit connections, that's just 75 megabytes/sec bandwidth if it's full duplex. That's peanuts in the computer world, like a 486 maybe Pentium 1 bandwidth. If ram is a concern it looks like it takes a SO-DIM, right their on the board... call them up and ask them to clarify. I'd say for what you're looking for that thing is perfect.
-manno
"You should be able to get an Athlon 64 to run at 500 MHz or so by scaling back the multiplier and FSB speed. "
I should point out that some MB's have limits on how low you can go. Mine will not go lower than one GHZ.
DISCLAIMER: Our products are hardware only, designed for OEM integration with application software. The documentation is not very comprehensive, or in some cases absent. We are not able to help you install software, so if you don't know what you're doing, or are unable to get help somewhere else, please do not place an order. Please note that we do not offer application software support, we will make any effort necessary to help solve any technical problems with our hardware, but please use only email for contacting us on support issues. Don't expect answers on questions already covered on the website or in the manual, or questions like "how do I install Linux ?"....
So basically they slapped together some hardware, didn't document it and won't help you use it.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
"I question whether you are looking in the wrong direction for what you are wanting to accomplish. You are looking for something to run drives for a streaming server which means you'll need a power supply for those too (which you won't pull off one of the low power sbc systems generally). Unless you just want to dump a single 2.5" drive in there, and in that case, again, the soekris 4801 would work just fine."
The IB705 SBC is for the multimedia market with SATA connectors.
http://www.technoland.com/pr_ib705.htm
They even have an online-store.
http://www.technoland.com/
I like the EPIAs, actually, quite a lot. I have been using an MII 12000 for some time now as a workstation, and it works quite well. It triple-boots Ubuntu, Slackware and XP, though I'm probably going to blow away the XP partitions very soon, as I finally got around to getting WINE installed and configured.
Anyway, it's a small board, 17cm x 17cm, fairly low profile, fits Mini-ITX, Flex-ATX, Micro-ATX and ATX cases, has a 1.2GHz processor (600MHz is available), has IDE, floppy, parallel, serial, USB, firewire, IR, audio, video, ethernet, CF and PCMCIA. The only downsides are: only 1 memory slot, and only one PCI slot. It draws about 35W, IIRC.
www.wavefront-av.com
Okay, so it's not quite a dupe, but there is a hell of an overlap!
Look here for a similar discussion on ask slashdot.... one month ago to the day, even!
www.wavefront-av.com
Old Laptop.
if 500 mhz is all you need, look around for older systems. they'll do everything you want, including lower power handling. i know for fact you can get a p3 550 box on ebay for around $75. if you don't like the case, put it in a big picture frame on the wall or something.
Cogito Eggo Sum, I think therefore I'm a waffle
I have the 533 MHz model with a gig of ram and quite like it as well. So far it runs win 2k though that could stand to be replaced. How do you find X works with the onboard graphics?
My recommendation to you is use Google to find out. You might also want to turn in your geek credentials while you're at it.
I've been looking for a while now for something similar. I want to build a RAID NAS array, similar to the Buffalo TeraStation (form factor being the key). In my research I have discovered that the TeraStation is probably the most cost effective route for multiple drives. Additionally, I've found the NSLU2 and similar devices to be far more cost effective than a home-brew solution for single/dual drive solutions.
Personally I'd recommend either going with a commercial solution, and hacking it to run whatever servers you want, or building a standard ATX form factor computer.
I tried to move my home file server (SAMBA and NFS) from a 350MHz G3 tower to a VIA EPIA board. It was a miserable mistake. VIA loads some extra-crappy consumer-quality chips onto their EPIA boards. Not only did IDE and NIC traffic hose the CPU more than it should, but the quality of the VGA output was low, it was blurry. The 800MHz EPIA was half the speed of the G3, and the fan made it louder.
If I were you I'd get a box designed to handle massixe I/O, not a cheap consumer board. Get your hands on an old Mac G4 tower, they have PCI-X slots. Slap an Intel gigabit ethernet card (the 64-bit PCI-X server kind) and a Promise TX2/300 SATA controller in there and even a 533MHz box will serve files faster than any EPIA can. The older G4s use very little energy and are as silent as the drives you put in them. Aim for a 'G4 (Digital Audio)', but don't use the onboard LAN if you want to go gigabit, it doesn't handle jumbo frames. Linux runs just fine on them. The PowerPC 7410 @ 466MHz in my box only dissipates 9 watts at full load, it doesn't even need a fan on it.
If that's not an option, look to get something with a Pentium-3 or a Pentium-M in it, Mini-ITX form factor. EPoX and Commell sell them. You won't find great I/O performance on a mini board though, just a fact of life.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
The Routerboard 200 series might work for you - they are CPU-limited like the Soekris boards, but have onboard USB and IDE (though it's the 44-pin laptop-style IDE port). If you're going for crazy paranoid reliability, you can boot from a CompactFlash drive. The 230s also have a couple of PCMCIA slots, so you could even conceivably go wireless with it. There's one SO-DIMM RAM slot on the bottom, miniPCI, and even a "regular" PCI slot (though you can't use both at once). Aside from the lack of monitor and keyboard ports, it's damn near a full-blown usable computer (and between the serial and USB ports, you can work around most of those problems).
If you're really only planning to use it as a Samba server, CPU won't be the limiting factor in all likelihood. Hard drive speed will probably be the big choke point. For power consumption, it's the same deal - the hard drive will probably use more juice than the rest of the system put together. Using a slower laptop-style drive will help that, but not too much.
You can order them in the States from WISP-Router. Make sure to get the 200 series, not the 500 series, which has more CPU but almost none of the other extras (it has a miniPCI slot and that's basically it).
http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT2189271708. html
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
Why not just get an off lease small form factor machine? A couple of weekends ago I picked up a 1.7GHz P4 HP Vectra unit for $160 CAD. Dropped in some spare RAM and a 200GB EIDE drive. Presto bingo bongo, instant whateverIwant box.
Intel released their single-board-computer into the Asian market about a year ago. Low power(12W TDP), small size(about 190x170mm), and cheap performance. It has a 1.0GHZ Shelton CPU (Cacheless 130NM PentiumM), built in sound, video, lan, usb, etc. Only thing this board is lacking is a serial port, but that only matters if you actually use one. I use one of these for my mini-torrent box. You can pick them up on ebay for less than $100 shipped. Just search for Intel+ITX, there is a guy that puts up 1 or two a week.
For the love of don't use a Geode based SBC. I've whinged about this before, but they're awful. For one thing all the media hardware (frame buffer and audio) is software emulated in the slow BIOS, but the serial ports don't work (don't know if you care), DMA crashes the board, the 'watchdog' is software and therefore useless; and finally interrupts act if they feel like it. My day job has shown me just how s*it thick these boards are. They look nice and fanless, ideal for MPD or Slimserver, but they're not worth the hassle.
SBC boards are hideously expensive. They're rated for industrial environments, specialty, low volume items with a lot of engineering in them.
Mini ITX is completely self contained, reasonably low power, and the big innovation was snap-on DCDC converters from a variety of companies. Mini-box.com is the only place I know offhand that sells them. There's a couple really slick models with compact flash drives, PCMCIA slots, dual ethernet boards.. and they're all under $200. Just add ram!
From my experience, they're also very rugged.
Great linux support too.
What more do you want?
My company makes a very small enclosure for these; there are lots of others out there as well. Once it's tucked away, you probably won't have to look at it again. That was the biggest problem I saw when specing these systems, so I turned it into an opportunity.
..don't panic
Use a mini-itx.
Several things... First of all, Soekris Net48xx, PC Engines WRAP and RouterBoard 22x are all practically the same board. A reference design from National Semiconductor - SC1100. They have identical base features, with options like PCI slot, RTC battery backup, memory, cpu speed and the like. They can route across the ethernet interfaces at a max of about 30mbit/sec with Linux 2.6. Reading from disk is much slower, and 2.5" IDE drives are unreliable when used 24/7. Using them for a fileserver is not a good idea.
However, with that being said I would use them above mini-itx stuff anyday. Mini-itx boards just don't have the reliability that they should for most SBC-type applications. Depending on what you are doing with them, they can be a big pain because most of them will have as many as four USB controllers that will use all of the available IRQs - and they don't support APIC!
the cheapest route will be a hackmeal of wireless gear.
;) I should actually try that some day... Anyways, that awsome table will also tell you if a particular router supported by the best Linux for Routers distribution out there, OpenWrt. Sveasoft++ for actual linux users.
The good news is the router. Small and prepackaged, wireless and good ole trusty 802.3 ethernet, 2-7 watts power, some have USB 2.0 connectivity. Most are 133-200 mhz, with the great mode being 200 mhz, however there are some faster. 200 mhz should be plenty for what you want; the routers all have excellent DMA capabilities for shuffling data around. No problems decoding a couple mp3's while doing some file access. As an interesting bonus, a number of the units will run off of basically any sort of voltage differential you can find; some of the Linksys's are reported good at 48v (although i cant imagine the voltage regulator onboard agrees with that statement). I cant remember, but there were a couple which seemed to run fine off of 4-6v. Almost every wall wart is a 12v supply, they just have flexible regulators.
The bad news is its basically a $60 CPU brick + wireless. Not bad at all the price, but you still need $20 USB hard drive enclosure, $100 hard drive (ahem, Seagate 7200.9; 5 year warranty & fast but noticably louder than fluid-bearings), and a usb sound card. I picked up a handful of C-Media 8 channel output cards which are, against all odds here, not entirely crap-- espsecially suprising at ~$20 a pop. So, really, the price isnt that bad. $100 basically for cpu & ram & wireless and the necessary peripherials, sans the HD itself. The suck is the stack of hard drive sound card and router, although I happen to like the modularity. Quite unexpectedly, I've found I'm usually using one or the other peripherial, oddly enough. Anyways, I personally feel it compares favorably to the mini-itx's which seem to run at truly inordate dollar sums, in complete spite of the inordately small ammounts of natural resources manufacturing required. And good luck finding boxes for em.
Carefully check out http://wiki.openwrt.org/TableOfHardware for complete router specs. Since you're going to have a hard drive, you just need the 4mb flash, but the RAM should be at least 16, quite preferably 32 megs. Really, its enough. There are a couple 64meg ones. If you really want to get persnickety, consider one of the uber-fast USB flash sticks and set it up as swap space.
I'm having some issues with my USB drive right now, otherwise I'd run some NFS benches for you. I've always found it to be acceptable, but I've never really benched it. I'd suspect USB 2.0 as the primary bottleneck, ethernet as the second, router as the third.
I was going to mention the old DEC boxes with dual pcmcia, but mine are both dead,-- not a good sign-- I cant find the blasted name anywhere, and-- deathknell here-- you want a low power solution.
Good luck
Myren
Thanks, everyone, for your replies. I think you've just confirmed what I already knew:
:-) so it makes sense to have a little future-proofing in there. I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up running stuff like an IMAP server, webserver for webmail, ClamAV and Spamassassin, maybe a web proxy, yadda yadda.
:-) The necessary 3.5" hard-drive would require significantly more power than a 2.5" unit in a mini-itx rig would need...
:-)
1. nano-ITX is vapourware
2. SBCs are too expensive for hobbyists
3. hackable boxes (such as NSLU2 and Linkstation) are good for limited use, but will max-out way before something like a mini-ITX solution
Re: my CPU and RAM requirements: Right now, I don't *need* 500MHz and 0.5Gb RAM, but I know I will. When there's a quiet little box running 24-7, I know I'll find more and more uses for it
Slimserver does like a fair amount of memory, too, and can be subject to music drop-outs if the CPU is underpowered or if other intensive threads don't run nice-ly. (who cares if my mail is filtered slowly, as long as the music doesn't stop)
Linkstation/Kurobox: that's certainly a contender, but I may want a little more horsepower occasionally, in the CPU and RAM departments. Nice unit, though, and top props to Buffalo for marketing such a hackable box
NSLU2: great little box (I've been reading Jim Buzbee's blog for a while) but really underpowered for what I need
Mini-ITX probably is the way to go, though I certainly will grep ebay for "SBC" occasionally
Thanks again,
Matthew
The more advanced the technology, the more open it is to primitive attack
You might need this patch, if it's a trident cyberblade graphics chip:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3304
I've had a slimp3/squeezebox for years and I've noticed that slimserver runs a lot better - esp. with a large collection - on a fast machine with enough RAM. I just upgraded my server from a 1Ghz P3 to a 3000+ amd64 and everything runs a lot smoother. (and I'm not even transcoding)
I run it as a moatly headless network server, so I don't have X running on it, but it should perform nicely for normal tasks (* or 16 MB video, SVGA resolution). 3D graphics will probably don't work well.
My ideal motherboard would have a single ethernet connector and be POE powered. The official POE standard supports only 13.5 watts and I want to be able to spin one of the larger hard disks available so I am prepared to accept a second 12v. power connector which implies an internal inverter.
The BIOS would support only PXE boots although the image of a functional machine is on the hard disk. The normal boot sequence would load a boot image off the hard drive while a "special" image could be loaded to test the hard drive and reload a fresh image. This would be accomplished from a workstation on the network.
Physical configuration would be like slices with vents on the long edge and resting on an external fan. Each slice would have two connectors on the front, power and RJ45 jack.
I suggest such a system would be a vast improvement over all the blade designs in existence.
How do you find X works with the onboard graphics?
Well enough under Slackware, though you need to do some tinkering. Very well under Ubuntu, no tinkering involved.
www.wavefront-av.com
I'm a bit late, but maybe someone still reads this. A possible suggestion: WYSE Winterm devices. Although they don't have an IDE connector, you can get them pretty much for free. They're quite powerful, can have USB ports (so maybe you can use an USB external disk), and memory can be extended with standard SODIMMs. And for a while now, you can run Linux on them. See winterm.gaast.net for more information. :-)