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."

Comments

Two words

[Mr.Coffee]

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.

NAS Servers

[relifram66]

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.

Ramblings...

[krisk21]

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!

Thanks all

[Lardmonster]

Thanks, everyone, for your replies. I think you've just confirmed what I already knew:

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 :-) 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.

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 :-) The necessary 3.5" hard-drive would require significantly more power than a 2.5" unit in a mini-itx rig would need...

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