You can compile & run the MythTV frontend on it. You could probably do SDTV MythTV playback, using the unaccelerated video of the PS3. But, the reports I have seen form other people that have tried say that it can't do HD video.
If Sony enabled accelerated video support, it would make a great frontend. With some code to take advantage of the cell processors, it could be an incredible frontend. But, that's not the case yet.
> Where? I see "including support for HDTV out (via DVI/LVDS and S-video)"
Yeah, there. Rather than "including support for HDTV out (via DVI/LVDS) and S-video", they claimed "including support for HDTV out (via DVI/LVDS and S-video)". It's not just poorly worded, it's incorrectly worded.
The article mentions the board's HDTV output capabilities. And, I'm sure many would like to use a tiny board like this for a MythTV frontend.. I know I would. But, if they ever actually become available (unlike the Nano-ITX vaporware debacle), don't run out and buy one until you know the specifics.
- The VIA CPUs are much too slow to do software decoding of HDTV material - Their integrated video has MPEG2 decoding capability, but with a ton of caveats
- Unknown hardware capabilities. Even though they claim HD output, the MPEG2 decoder may not be able to handle HD frames. in the past, "Unichrome Pro" chips could all do HD decoding. In recent chips, even Unicrome Pro are limited to 1024x1024. Many people have been burned by this and bought what turned out to be useless VIA motherboards.
- Poor driver support. Basically no support from VIA, and a dedicated, but limited group of developers on the OpenChrome project. VIA made a lot of promises about open specs, software, etc, and then produced very little, had licensing issues, closed source drivers, and basically abandoned the linux drivers.
- Stability. Even when working, the XXMC / XvMC VLD MPEG2 acceleration can be troublesome, and will not do smooth playback.
The linked article obviously doesn't have good information.. they claim HDTV output via the S-Video port, which is of course not possible.
I would recommend waiting until some brave soul has already proven one of the boards to do what you need, and preferably has a netboot linux image available for download.
Exactly.. I was waiting for that damn Nano-ITX board for two years after their announcement, and still couldn't buy one. I ended up going with a Mac Mini instead, which is probably just as small as what you could build with a Nano, and certainly better looking.
After the Nano debacle, and getting burned on a crappy VIA Unichrome Pro (claims of HDTV support on the box, but the MPEG2 decoder only supports up to 1024x1024) I don't think I'll be buying anything from VIA in the near future.
We see both sides of Mr. Jobs here.. The perfectionist that drove the absolutely wonderful user interface of the iPhone. The attention to detail, and unwillingness to stop at "good enough" just drips off that interface.
Then, we see the arrogant Jobs, insisting on a closed platform, locking out third party software. His statements about it being more like an iPod than a computer are ludicrous. The input capabilities of an iPod are non-existant, making third party software almost irrelevant. A closed iPhone will be hamstrung from the start.
I really like the UI. But, I'll probably wait a bit for the Video iPod version, with no phone features. The inability to load my own software (i.e. have full control of the device I pay for) is a big drawback, as is the two year commitment to Cingular. (And, no.. I'm not an Apple nay-sayer. I own two iPods and three Macs. I'm just not a fan of completely closed systems.)
This is good stuff.. Patent trolls don't have the kind of money needed to buy congressmen. And, the deep pocketed companies they are after surely do. So, hopefully this continues, and those big companies get the congressmen they control to reform the patent system.
> I can picture a nice scenario where one will be able to choose "iPhone Project" in Xcode and code like they would (albeit with a very different GUI notion) for the Mac.
That will be interesting to see.. I hope it's something like that (especially since I've spent a lot of time learning Cocoa lately). But, after seeing the apps they demo'd, I'm thinking their application development paradigm will be "Widgets". While that's certainly better than virtually all other closed systems, it's not Cocoa. But, obviously that's just a guess at this point.
The page about the "Apple TV" has a link to the new wireless base station. It looks interesting, including some more advanced filtering (e.g. limit your kids time when they are allowed internet access).
Youtube video looks bad enough as a 2 inch square on my laptop display. Scale that up to my 50 inch HDTV, and it will be complete garbage. But, maybe now that they are in Google, they have the resources to allow storage and transfer of HD video.
If so, then the second quality issue comes into play, the quality of the content. I personally find the vast majority of internet video to be worthless. But, with the seeming success of YouTube, and all the video links that end up on Digg, I guess many others actually watch that junk.
ZFS sounds very interesting, although I don't see a lot that would be useful on my MacBook Pro (a lot more would be useful on my Linux server / MythTV backend).
The main benefit I saw is the 'snapshot' support (copy on write). I used this a long time ago on AFS, and found it very handy.
So, are there any compelling reasons _not_ to use ZFS?
I think they're smarter than that. They wouldn't go after an entrenched market, where they have no particular skillset advantage, especially one that you need to throw tons of money at to get a foothold. Gaming has been done, by many more qualified competitors.
I wouldn't be surprised if they offered a few simple games, for the casual gamer, on a device like the iTV. Similar to what they do for the iPod. But, I wouldn't call that going after the gaming market, any more than I would call the iPod a GameBoy/PSP competitor.
I bet the same argument was made back when color TV was the new thing. Since the station can't demand any more for this service, and it just becomes the new standard, they'll need to be dragged kicking and screaming.
In the U.S. a common side effect of this issue is the proliferation of sub-channels. The TV stations add an SD channel (weather channel, music channel, or general programming) alongside the main HD channel. This way, they can milk more advertising money. This subchannel takes away from the available bandwidth, effecting the video quality of the HD program (especially for sports programs).
I have seen this mentioned every so often here, and I am interested in trying it out. But, the stuff I read blurs the line between what I think of as BIOS functions and the actual OS. So, I am not sure if it's worth trying out or not.
Does anyone have pointers to good information, or experience themselves? The kind of questions I have are:
- Do I still have the configuration capabilities that you expect in a Phoenix/Award BIOS? En/Dis-able integrated devices, Fan Control, ACPI en/dis-able, etc.
- The articles all say that LinuxBIOS boots a linux kernel very quickly. Is this into a limited BIOS setup environment, or is this the actual kernel for the Operating System that you're running? If it's the latter, don't kernel upgrades become more difficult/dangerous? (Are there any docs which go through the system bootstrap process step by step?)
- Is AMD64 (in 64 bit mode) supported?
- Beyond the Linux hobbyist incentive to try out new things, are there any other major advantages to using LinuxBIOS on my home Linux server (which is a supported board)? Do I lose anything my current Award BIOS offers?
The article mentioned that it was recognized as a valid USB device (no surprise there), and the DVD Player.app started up when they inserted a DVD. But, there was no app able to play a Blue-Ray disc.
BR DVD playback would make an excellent addition to my core duo Mac Mini HTPC.. I wonder if MacOS 10.5 (Leopard) will have Blue Ray support?
The way the article here on/. was worded, it sounds like the two things are related.. But, I don't know that this is true.
I thought his resignation had more to do with the Republicans getting their collective asses handed to them in the recent midterm elections.
I don't know/care whether he's gay, and would certainly not count Bill Maher as a credible source. But, if he were in fact gay, he would almost surely be pushed out of that position very quickly. The Republicans have done their best to whip up anti-gay sentiment, to "energize their base". Although flaming hypocrisy does seem to be the norm in D.C., a bogey man is more effective when you don't also provide a counter example to discredit your own claims. So they would have to push him out of the public eye.
Actually, you're wrong on both counts. The PowerBook does have fans, although they are slow or even stopped until you put the system under load and it heats up. When it was new, the battery life on the G4 was around 2.5 hours. Now, with an aged battery, it's nowhere near that. The MBP's battery life seems good, compared to the weak battery in my PowerBook. With new batteries in the PB, they would probably be pretty close.
I always liked the PowerPC processors, and the architecture without all the baggage of x86's. But, it's hard to argue with the performance and flexibility of the new MacBook Pro's.
I didn't have a first-gen MBP, but I just bought the new Core 2 Duo version, the base system with 2.16GHz CPUs.
I have no heat issues with this machine. The bottom of it is warm to the touch, but certainly not hot to the point of being uncomfortable. I find that it runs cooler than my PowerBook G4 1.67GHz.
Re:Not even capable of what the original XBOX can
on
Wii Confirmed at 480p
·
· Score: 1
Yup, there are quite a few games that do 720p, and a handful that do 1080i.
The list gives the resolutions supported, and whether widescreen (16:9) is supported. It includes 480p as an "HD" resolution, so the 720p games may seem a bit sparse, but there are quite a few.
> Most people don't have HDTVs. But I do. And the idea of buying a console that will never talk to it, never show me the full picture, is irritating. Particularly because I like the Wii.
That's overstating it a bit, isn't it? An HDTV will still be able to display a 480p game much better than a 480i game. Standard 480i is 4:3, and interlaced so it's half the resolution. 480p will give it a widescreen capability at 720x480 resolution @ 60fps.
Which is not to say it's not disappointing.. I would also much rather see it in full 720p on my HDTV. But, if it could only do SDTV (4:3 480i video), I would not even consider buying one. At 480p, it will at least look decent.
I sent Brian a question (shortly before he got "Slashdotted") about whether the new MacBook Pros supported 64 bit mode. He was kind enough to compile and run the little 'sizeof' program I sent him and respond about the output..
The announcements and marketing information about the new MBP's was conspicuously absent of any mention of the 64 bit support of the new Merom / Core 2 Duo processor. This is strange because both the Mac Pro and the iMac specifically mention their 64 bit support.
There is a lot of contradictory information floating around about the state of 64 bit support on the Intel Macs. So, I asked him to compile an app to show the sizeof a long int and pointer. The output showed 4 Bytes / 32 bits.
So, this is curious... Does x86 Tiger not support 64 bit mode? But, people have done tests on 32 bit vs. 64 bit on intel Macs ( http://www.geekpatrol.ca/blog/150/ ). So, why is the MBP different than the iMac, which uses the same processor and chipset?
Anyone have more definitive information on 64 bit support for this new MacBook Pro? Or for x86 Tiger, the new iMacs and Mac Pro's?
Also, before all the "64 bit support is pointless" replies; yes, I know it can only handle 3GB of RAM. I know the benefits of 64 bit will not be dramatic (I already have two Linux boxes running Athlon64's in 64 bit mode). I'm just curious whether all the features of the processor can be used. I also want the performance benefit of doubling the number of general purpose processors and 64 bit math. And, since Leopard is supposed to have much better 64 bit support, I want to see where this MacBook Pro will stand.
Yup, here's the big payoff... When arguing against the antitrust violations, Ballmer cried "back off and watch us innovate". Here we see the fruit of those efforts, rebuilding the company to enable a whole new way of milking revenue.
The microsoft ship is sinking.. slowly and agonizingly, but it's sinking.
There big innovations over the last few years have been around leveraging their monopoly position to keep increasing revenues, as the market demands. 'Windows Genuine Advantage' and the beefed up mechanisms in Vista.. Moving from a purchased software model to a recurring cost license.. Brilliant! Just what customers are clamoring for!
I, for one, hope they really crank up their efforts in these areas. Nothing will drive users to MacOS and Linux faster than this crap.
The reason why these things are expensive is that they are real businesses, needing to make a profit to stay in business. It costs a lot of money to staff developer support people, developers, QA, and all the ancillary staff for any business. Consider the relatively small number of companies using their products/services (it's not a consumer product with millions of sales, after all), and you can see why their services are expensive.
Like all things OSS, you have a choice.. If a supported embedded linux platform is not worth $25K to you, you're free to 'roll your own'. But, when you compare it to the cost and time of doing your own development, QA, etc, $25K doesn't seem like so much.
> Also, some of those cheap wireless routers actually run linux, so it's not unrealistic to modify them to support openvpn encryption in hardware instead.
Yes, good point. There is an open source firmware for the popular WRV54G that supports OpenVPN or PPTP. But, then I have to install OpenVPN + a tun/tap kernel driver on my PowerBook. Not a huge deal, but third pary kernel modules scare me a bit. Instead, I picked up a surprisingly powerful router/firewall/802.11g/IPSec VPN device on eBay for $50 and used a free IPSec session manager (IPSecuritas) on MacOS X and it works very well.
> Here's a thought tho, many wireless cards support hardware encryption acceleration, how easy would it be to make OpenSSL support these cards?
I assume you mean the crypto for WEP/WPA. They use RC4 encryption, which is not a common algorithm used with IPSec (3DES or AES are the standard algorithms used). They are most likely 'hard coded' for the specific job of wifi encryption. It would take a more versatile processor to enable offload of crypto application processing. But, at the DSL/Cable data rates we're talking about, the host CPU should hardly notice the extra load. (Note that there are a few IPSec accelerator NICs available, like the 3Com 3XP or Intel Pro 100/S. But, I'm more concerned about the overhead on the router side, with that little embedded processor crypto can be quite a drag on the system).
Slashdot Mirror
Let's see if the /. crowd gets behind him now that he writes something generally agreeable here.. Probably.
For me, he has lost a lot of credibility after "State of Fear", which was an anti-global warming book.
You can compile & run the MythTV frontend on it. You could probably do SDTV MythTV playback, using the unaccelerated video of the PS3. But, the reports I have seen form other people that have tried say that it can't do HD video.
If Sony enabled accelerated video support, it would make a great frontend. With some code to take advantage of the cell processors, it could be an incredible frontend. But, that's not the case yet.
> Where? I see "including support for HDTV out (via DVI/LVDS and S-video)"
Yeah, there. Rather than "including support for HDTV out (via DVI/LVDS) and S-video", they claimed "including support for HDTV out (via DVI/LVDS and S-video)". It's not just poorly worded, it's incorrectly worded.
The article mentions the board's HDTV output capabilities. And, I'm sure many would like to use a tiny board like this for a MythTV frontend.. I know I would. But, if they ever actually become available (unlike the Nano-ITX vaporware debacle), don't run out and buy one until you know the specifics.
- The VIA CPUs are much too slow to do software decoding of HDTV material
- Their integrated video has MPEG2 decoding capability, but with a ton of caveats
- Unknown hardware capabilities. Even though they claim HD output, the MPEG2 decoder may not be able to handle HD frames. in the past, "Unichrome Pro" chips could all do HD decoding. In recent chips, even Unicrome Pro are limited to 1024x1024. Many people have been burned by this and bought what turned out to be useless VIA motherboards.
- Poor driver support. Basically no support from VIA, and a dedicated, but limited group of developers on the OpenChrome project. VIA made a lot of promises about open specs, software, etc, and then produced very little, had licensing issues, closed source drivers, and basically abandoned the linux drivers.
- Stability. Even when working, the XXMC / XvMC VLD MPEG2 acceleration can be troublesome, and will not do smooth playback.
The linked article obviously doesn't have good information.. they claim HDTV output via the S-Video port, which is of course not possible.
I would recommend waiting until some brave soul has already proven one of the boards to do what you need, and preferably has a netboot linux image available for download.
Exactly.. I was waiting for that damn Nano-ITX board for two years after their announcement, and still couldn't buy one. I ended up going with a Mac Mini instead, which is probably just as small as what you could build with a Nano, and certainly better looking.
After the Nano debacle, and getting burned on a crappy VIA Unichrome Pro (claims of HDTV support on the box, but the MPEG2 decoder only supports up to 1024x1024) I don't think I'll be buying anything from VIA in the near future.
We see both sides of Mr. Jobs here.. The perfectionist that drove the absolutely wonderful user interface of the iPhone. The attention to detail, and unwillingness to stop at "good enough" just drips off that interface.
Then, we see the arrogant Jobs, insisting on a closed platform, locking out third party software. His statements about it being more like an iPod than a computer are ludicrous. The input capabilities of an iPod are non-existant, making third party software almost irrelevant. A closed iPhone will be hamstrung from the start.
I really like the UI. But, I'll probably wait a bit for the Video iPod version, with no phone features. The inability to load my own software (i.e. have full control of the device I pay for) is a big drawback, as is the two year commitment to Cingular. (And, no.. I'm not an Apple nay-sayer. I own two iPods and three Macs. I'm just not a fan of completely closed systems.)
This is good stuff.. Patent trolls don't have the kind of money needed to buy congressmen. And, the deep pocketed companies they are after surely do. So, hopefully this continues, and those big companies get the congressmen they control to reform the patent system.
> I can picture a nice scenario where one will be able to choose "iPhone Project" in Xcode and code like they would (albeit with a very different GUI notion) for the Mac.
That will be interesting to see.. I hope it's something like that (especially since I've spent a lot of time learning Cocoa lately). But, after seeing the apps they demo'd, I'm thinking their application development paradigm will be "Widgets". While that's certainly better than virtually all other closed systems, it's not Cocoa. But, obviously that's just a guess at this point.
The page about the "Apple TV" has a link to the new wireless base station. It looks interesting, including some more advanced filtering (e.g. limit your kids time when they are allowed internet access).
Any other new products or updates?
Youtube video looks bad enough as a 2 inch square on my laptop display. Scale that up to my 50 inch HDTV, and it will be complete garbage. But, maybe now that they are in Google, they have the resources to allow storage and transfer of HD video.
If so, then the second quality issue comes into play, the quality of the content. I personally find the vast majority of internet video to be worthless. But, with the seeming success of YouTube, and all the video links that end up on Digg, I guess many others actually watch that junk.
ZFS sounds very interesting, although I don't see a lot that would be useful on my MacBook Pro (a lot more would be useful on my Linux server / MythTV backend).
The main benefit I saw is the 'snapshot' support (copy on write). I used this a long time ago on AFS, and found it very handy.
So, are there any compelling reasons _not_ to use ZFS?
I think they're smarter than that. They wouldn't go after an entrenched market, where they have no particular skillset advantage, especially one that you need to throw tons of money at to get a foothold. Gaming has been done, by many more qualified competitors.
I wouldn't be surprised if they offered a few simple games, for the casual gamer, on a device like the iTV. Similar to what they do for the iPod. But, I wouldn't call that going after the gaming market, any more than I would call the iPod a GameBoy/PSP competitor.
I bet the same argument was made back when color TV was the new thing. Since the station can't demand any more for this service, and it just becomes the new standard, they'll need to be dragged kicking and screaming.
In the U.S. a common side effect of this issue is the proliferation of sub-channels. The TV stations add an SD channel (weather channel, music channel, or general programming) alongside the main HD channel. This way, they can milk more advertising money. This subchannel takes away from the available bandwidth, effecting the video quality of the HD program (especially for sports programs).
I have seen this mentioned every so often here, and I am interested in trying it out. But, the stuff I read blurs the line between what I think of as BIOS functions and the actual OS. So, I am not sure if it's worth trying out or not.
Does anyone have pointers to good information, or experience themselves? The kind of questions I have are:
- Do I still have the configuration capabilities that you expect in a Phoenix/Award BIOS? En/Dis-able integrated devices, Fan Control, ACPI en/dis-able, etc.
- The articles all say that LinuxBIOS boots a linux kernel very quickly. Is this into a limited BIOS setup environment, or is this the actual kernel for the Operating System that you're running? If it's the latter, don't kernel upgrades become more difficult/dangerous? (Are there any docs which go through the system bootstrap process step by step?)
- Is AMD64 (in 64 bit mode) supported?
- Beyond the Linux hobbyist incentive to try out new things, are there any other major advantages to using LinuxBIOS on my home Linux server (which is a supported board)? Do I lose anything my current Award BIOS offers?
The article mentioned that it was recognized as a valid USB device (no surprise there), and the DVD Player.app started up when they inserted a DVD. But, there was no app able to play a Blue-Ray disc.
BR DVD playback would make an excellent addition to my core duo Mac Mini HTPC.. I wonder if MacOS 10.5 (Leopard) will have Blue Ray support?
The way the article here on /. was worded, it sounds like the two things are related.. But, I don't know that this is true.
I thought his resignation had more to do with the Republicans getting their collective asses handed to them in the recent midterm elections.
I don't know/care whether he's gay, and would certainly not count Bill Maher as a credible source. But, if he were in fact gay, he would almost surely be pushed out of that position very quickly. The Republicans have done their best to whip up anti-gay sentiment, to "energize their base". Although flaming hypocrisy does seem to be the norm in D.C., a bogey man is more effective when you don't also provide a counter example to discredit your own claims. So they would have to push him out of the public eye.
Actually, you're wrong on both counts. The PowerBook does have fans, although they are slow or even stopped until you put the system under load and it heats up. When it was new, the battery life on the G4 was around 2.5 hours. Now, with an aged battery, it's nowhere near that. The MBP's battery life seems good, compared to the weak battery in my PowerBook. With new batteries in the PB, they would probably be pretty close.
I always liked the PowerPC processors, and the architecture without all the baggage of x86's. But, it's hard to argue with the performance and flexibility of the new MacBook Pro's.
I didn't have a first-gen MBP, but I just bought the new Core 2 Duo version, the base system with 2.16GHz CPUs.
I have no heat issues with this machine. The bottom of it is warm to the touch, but certainly not hot to the point of being uncomfortable. I find that it runs cooler than my PowerBook G4 1.67GHz.
Yup, there are quite a few games that do 720p, and a handful that do 1080i.
Check out the "HD Game Database" at this site for a good list: http://www.hdtvarcade.com/
The list gives the resolutions supported, and whether widescreen (16:9) is supported. It includes 480p as an "HD" resolution, so the 720p games may seem a bit sparse, but there are quite a few.
> Most people don't have HDTVs. But I do. And the idea of buying a console that will never talk to it, never show me the full picture, is irritating. Particularly because I like the Wii.
That's overstating it a bit, isn't it? An HDTV will still be able to display a 480p game much better than a 480i game. Standard 480i is 4:3, and interlaced so it's half the resolution. 480p will give it a widescreen capability at 720x480 resolution @ 60fps.
Which is not to say it's not disappointing.. I would also much rather see it in full 720p on my HDTV. But, if it could only do SDTV (4:3 480i video), I would not even consider buying one. At 480p, it will at least look decent.
Thanks for the tip.. Brian read this thread and tried out that flag. With that flag, it outputs "8" for pointer and long int.
So, it seems that the kernel on the new MBP's are indeed 64 bit.
I sent Brian a question (shortly before he got "Slashdotted") about whether the new MacBook Pros supported 64 bit mode. He was kind enough to compile and run the little 'sizeof' program I sent him and respond about the output..
The announcements and marketing information about the new MBP's was conspicuously absent of any mention of the 64 bit support of the new Merom / Core 2 Duo processor. This is strange because both the Mac Pro and the iMac specifically mention their 64 bit support.
There is a lot of contradictory information floating around about the state of 64 bit support on the Intel Macs. So, I asked him to compile an app to show the sizeof a long int and pointer. The output showed 4 Bytes / 32 bits.
So, this is curious... Does x86 Tiger not support 64 bit mode? But, people have done tests on 32 bit vs. 64 bit on intel Macs ( http://www.geekpatrol.ca/blog/150/ ). So, why is the MBP different than the iMac, which uses the same processor and chipset?
Anyone have more definitive information on 64 bit support for this new MacBook Pro? Or for x86 Tiger, the new iMacs and Mac Pro's?
Also, before all the "64 bit support is pointless" replies; yes, I know it can only handle 3GB of RAM. I know the benefits of 64 bit will not be dramatic (I already have two Linux boxes running Athlon64's in 64 bit mode). I'm just curious whether all the features of the processor can be used. I also want the performance benefit of doubling the number of general purpose processors and 64 bit math. And, since Leopard is supposed to have much better 64 bit support, I want to see where this MacBook Pro will stand.
Yup, here's the big payoff... When arguing against the antitrust violations, Ballmer cried "back off and watch us innovate". Here we see the fruit of those efforts, rebuilding the company to enable a whole new way of milking revenue.
The microsoft ship is sinking.. slowly and agonizingly, but it's sinking.
There big innovations over the last few years have been around leveraging their monopoly position to keep increasing revenues, as the market demands. 'Windows Genuine Advantage' and the beefed up mechanisms in Vista.. Moving from a purchased software model to a recurring cost license.. Brilliant! Just what customers are clamoring for!
I, for one, hope they really crank up their efforts in these areas. Nothing will drive users to MacOS and Linux faster than this crap.
The reason why these things are expensive is that they are real businesses, needing to make a profit to stay in business. It costs a lot of money to staff developer support people, developers, QA, and all the ancillary staff for any business. Consider the relatively small number of companies using their products/services (it's not a consumer product with millions of sales, after all), and you can see why their services are expensive.
Like all things OSS, you have a choice.. If a supported embedded linux platform is not worth $25K to you, you're free to 'roll your own'. But, when you compare it to the cost and time of doing your own development, QA, etc, $25K doesn't seem like so much.
> Also, some of those cheap wireless routers actually run linux, so it's not unrealistic to modify them to support openvpn encryption in hardware instead.
Yes, good point. There is an open source firmware for the popular WRV54G that supports OpenVPN or PPTP. But, then I have to install OpenVPN + a tun/tap kernel driver on my PowerBook. Not a huge deal, but third pary kernel modules scare me a bit. Instead, I picked up a surprisingly powerful router/firewall/802.11g/IPSec VPN device on eBay for $50 and used a free IPSec session manager (IPSecuritas) on MacOS X and it works very well.
> Here's a thought tho, many wireless cards support hardware encryption acceleration, how easy would it be to make OpenSSL support these cards?
I assume you mean the crypto for WEP/WPA. They use RC4 encryption, which is not a common algorithm used with IPSec (3DES or AES are the standard algorithms used). They are most likely 'hard coded' for the specific job of wifi encryption. It would take a more versatile processor to enable offload of crypto application processing. But, at the DSL/Cable data rates we're talking about, the host CPU should hardly notice the extra load. (Note that there are a few IPSec accelerator NICs available, like the 3Com 3XP or Intel Pro 100/S. But, I'm more concerned about the overhead on the router side, with that little embedded processor crypto can be quite a drag on the system).