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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.
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
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'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.
Hate to break it to ya but those arent PCI-X slots In a G4. They are regular PCI 64bit 33mhz slots. Twice as fast as normal pci 32bit/33mhz. You can tell because the notch in the 32 bit portion of the slot is for 5 volt operation. No PCI-X card or even PCI 64bit 66mhz card was 5 volts, only 3.3 volts. The G5 had PCI-X slots that are now being replaced with PCI Express slots. A PCI-X card might work in a 64/33 slot but check first, some dont work below 64/66.
The epia boards suck because the via cpu has poor preformane compared to AMD and Intel CPU's with the same rating. In my opinion try a laptop. They are designed for low power operation and have all the I/O you need built in. There are laptops with gigabit ethernet, wireless, fire wire 800, usb 2.0, and 32bit pc card slots. What the laptop doesnt have you can add on with a PC card. Raid systems can be setup using fire wire or usb hard drives in external boxes. The battery will act as a built in UPS in case of a power outage. Plus you dont even need a keyboard, mouse or monitor as they are all built in.
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, 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