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Hardware

Tiny Boxen 290

Posted by michael from the blink-and-you'll-miss-it dept.
swg101 writes "These people (openbrick.org) have developed a small computer designed for open source and free software. I quote: "This great little Linux box can be used as a firewall, micro-server, PABX, thin client, multimedia, almost anything imaginable. It contains a fanless 300 Mhz x86 compatible Geode processor and 128 MB SDRAM. Software can be installed on a Compact Flash or on an optional Hard Disk." Sounds like a nice solution for many applications."
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Tiny Boxen More

Tiny Boxen

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  • Dude.. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by NeoSkandranon ( 515696 )
    Boxen still isn't a word.

    • And you call yourself a geek? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 21, 2002 @04:53PM (#4304446)
      This "boxen" issue has come up before on ./ and I'm surprised the argument continues.
      1) Since the oh-so-consistent English language uses the term "oxen" as the plural of "ox", it sounds reasonable (and amusing) to use "boxen" for "box".
      2) Any hacker or geek with some sense of computing history knows that clusters of the late, great VAX systems from Digital Equipment Corp. (pre-Compaq) were known as VAXen.
      3) The English language has no ultimate authority comparable to the Royal Academy of the Language in Spain, or its equivalent in France. So making up words in English is quite easy, and legitimacy comes to them with wide usage. No need for the latest official dictionary to be published. ;-)
    • http://www.oed.com/public/readers/research.htm

    • Re:Dude.. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by packeteer ( 566398 )
      English is STILL not a dead languadge. If you want an unchanging languadge go learn latin. Sorry but everything changes and there is no "official" english. When Webster "standardized" english with his dictionary he really just put out his own opinion on what is standard. If you want a quick example of how "english" has changed try http://www.m-w.com/about/look.htm [m-w.com].

      • Re:Dude.. (Score:2, Informative)

        by NortWind ( 575520 )
        English is STILL not a dead languadge. If you want an unchanging languadge go learn latin.

        I believe the Pope keeps his records in Latin, and that occasionally he commisions the creation of a new word in Latin when they can't get by otherwise. The Latin word for "helicopter" is such a word. So even Latin is not a safe refuge from change.

    • Umm, yes there is (Score:3, Informative)

      by jerm_nz ( 71791 )
      http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=boxen

      Third entry down
    • Moderation Totals: Offtopic=1, Troll=2, Insightful=4, Overrated=1, Total=8.

      Slashdot math, how do i love thee, let me count the ways...

    • Re:Dude.. (Score:2, Informative)

      by colinemckay ( 610522 )
      Dude,

      Boxen _is_a word:

      boxen

      a. Made of boxwood; pertaining to, or resembling, the box

      The faded hue of sapless boxen leaves. --Dryden.
      Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary

      It just happens to be developing a new meaning, by virtue of common usage:

      boxen

      (By analogy with VAXen) A fanciful plural of box often encountered in the phrase "Unix boxen", used to describe commodity Unix hardware. The connotation is that any two Unix boxen are interchangeable.

  • Openbrick Off The Wall (Score:4, Funny)

    by spacefight ( 577141 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @04:23PM (#4304328)
    Looks like they're serving their website out of one of these tiny boxes ;)

  • Truely Quiet and Cheap (Score:4, Interesting)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @04:23PM (#4304329) Homepage Journal
    Hmm. If Flash memory gets just a little cheaper, you could have a serious desktop computer with no moving parts at all. Or you could install a disk drive that emphasizes low power consumption and limiting noise, rather than performance. There are a lot of desktop users who hate computer noice and dislike power waste.

    Of course this all depends on availability of good Linux apps. It isn't just the Linux emphasis of the boxes designers. Windows is just too bloated to run on this kind of system.

    • Why not just use a whole crapload of RAM? RAM is incredibly cheap these days, after all. I'm sure that, if a company wanted, they could create a custom design that would hold a few gigs in a small space.

      However, you've still got the problem of the spinning CD. I don't think that'll change anytime soon.

      • RAM, Power (Score:2, Informative)

        by fm6 ( 162816 )
        Except that RAM only works when the machine is turned on. You need something more reliable for long-term storage.
        • Except that RAM only works when the machine is turned on. You need something more reliable for long-term storage.

          MRAM (Magnetic RAM) is going to be the solution -- persistent memory, i.e., data is retained over power off/on cycles. Once manufacturers figure out how to make it inexpensive enough, we'll have "instant on" computers with all software and operating states in MRAM, and (optional) disk storage only used for large volume storage -- and perhaps not even for that, if the data is valuable enough to justify using MRAM. (Expect MRAM will always be more expensive than cheap high-density disk storage.)

          • You mean something like this [usyd.edu.au]?

            Magnetic RAM died a long time ago, friend, to a much more economical solution dubbed the "semiconductor."
        • You poweroff your Linux box[en]?! ;)

          I was thinking of that, but, if you only have a few gigs, you could use a backup system, making a copy of the contents in RAM to a mass-storage device before you reboot. Assuming you don't reboot much, it wouldn't be too much of a hastle.

    • Article with more details (Score:5, Informative)

      by gregfortune ( 313889 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @04:49PM (#4304432)
      openbrick.org seems to be getting hit pretty hard, but Linux Max has a pretty detailed article on the Open Brick.. And it's not slashdotted.. yet... http://www.linuxmax.net/news/00816.html [linuxmax.net]

    • If Flash memory gets just a little cheaper, you could have a serious desktop computer with no moving parts at all.

      That'd be hard. A sector of a flash chip will wear out and turn into a "bad sector" after about 100,000 writes. The flash controller will have to have some sort of logic to treat repeated writes specially. Apparently, most modern CompactFlash cartridges' integrated controllers can do this; can anybody explain how such logic works?

      And even though the blurb mentions that the CPU doesn't need a fan, wouldn't the power supply still need a fan? I can't get to the server that is hosting the article, and when I try to use the Google cache, it takes several minutes for Mozilla to realize that the real server won't respond to requests for the page's stylesheet.

      • The special logic involves checking to see if the flash bit contains the value (1/0) you want before writing to it. With a 50% hit-rate 100k writes becomes 200k.
        And you can probably outdo that if it's segmented and portions are dedicated to a particular use - data of a particular type (eg html or mpeg) tend to bias towards 1s or 0s. But I don't think the controller would do that, you as the operator would have to do so.

        • The special logic involves checking to see if the flash bit contains the value (1/0) you want before writing to it.

          Not exactly. Flash memory is written to by first erasing the sector to all 1's and then clearing the bits you want cleared.

          With a 50% hit-rate 100k writes becomes 200k.

          200,000 writes is still too few for a directory track.

          data of a particular type (eg html or mpeg) tend to bias towards 1s or 0s.

          HTML might bias slightly, but MPEG doesn't. If it did, you would be able to compress MPEG files further with the Huffman coding used in gzip. (You can't.)

          • I freely admit I pulled my answer right out of my arse, but I have a feeling you did too.
            Clearing to 1s then blanking 0s would be more writes than just basic overwriting.
            And Huffman encoding is about repeating patterns, not frequency of 1s and 0s without order taken into account. You take a long but frequent pattern and replace it with a shorter one, but then have to remap the shorter one etc.
            mpeg tends to contain more 0s than ones, but not in repeatable patterns so there's no advantage to compressing it further in that manner.

            • Clearing to 1s then blanking 0s would be more writes than just basic overwriting.

              Clearing to 1s is not done bit-by-bit. I believe it's usually done in bulk, like EPROMs were.

            • Clearing to 1s then blanking 0s would be more writes than just basic overwriting.

              Flash memory is divided into sectors. When you erase a sector of flash memory, the whole sector becomes all 1's. The 100K writes figure refers to 100K successful erases of a given sector. "Just basic overwriting" would AND the written data into the existing data. I'm guessing that flash file systems take advantage of this somehow.

              And Huffman encoding is about repeating patterns, not frequency of 1s and 0s without order taken into account. You take a long but frequent pattern and replace it with a shorter one, but then have to remap the shorter one etc.

              Huffman maps fixed-length sequences of bits (usually 4, 8, or 16 at a time) to variable-length sequences of bits. If you have lots more 1's than 0's, then you'll get a lot of 1111, 1110, 1101, 1011, and 0111 nibbles, which can be reduced to shorter words. However, JPEG, MP3, and MPEG already have compression (including Huffman coding) in the bitstream, so re-compressing the data isn't going to help.

      • Cool! (Score:2)

        by fm6 ( 162816 )
        And even though the blurb mentions that the CPU doesn't need a fan, wouldn't the power supply still need a fan?
        Why? To cool it? Not every power supply needs a fan to cool off. It depends on how much heat the PS generates, and how good it is at dissipting heat through convection and radiation.
    • I guess you could as long as you don't need to write things to the memory system after the first time...

      You think hard drives wear out fast? Flash wears out faster. The numbers I've heard are between 1000 and 1,000,000,000 writes (depending on the make/model/brand). Of course, one possible solution is to use mostly flash, as well as some of the more long-lasting (in the presence of many, many writes) memory systems.

      I just found this one [ramtron.com] for example.

      As far as no moving parts...water coolers have moving parts and fans have moving parts...so unless you live in a very, very cold place, you're going to need moving parts. But I suppose you could do without a floppy, and it seems technically feasable to have a CD-ROM drive that has a laser which is difracted to reflect the entire surface all at once, and have millions of photoreceptors to read the entire disk image at once. Has anybody made one of those?

    • Or you could install a disk drive that emphasizes low power consumption and limiting noise, rather than performance

      Or you could go for the balance point and install a Seagate BarracudaIV, quiet and pretty fast.

  • Slashdotted... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Cubeman ( 530448 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @04:24PM (#4304330)
    I bet they need a fan on that CPU right about now :)

    *flames scorch the motherboard*

  • Smoking (Score:3, Funny)

    by Ratbert42 ( 452340 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @04:25PM (#4304340)
    Sounds like a nice solution for many applications."

    Apparently not for webhosting.

  • Google Cache (Score:4, Informative)

    by OrangeHairMan ( 560161 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @04:29PM (#4304351)
    Get the Google cache here: http://216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:fi5nQ4GvkE0C: openbrick.org/+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 [216.239.39.100]

    Orange

  • I want one, (Score:2, Interesting)

    by brad3378 ( 155304 )
    ... For my home entertainment center,
    I especially like the Fan-less processor to cut back on noise.
    but...
    I have looked near and far, and can't seem to find a TV tuner card that will fit in those "small form factor" / low profile PCI slots. Do they even exist?
    Any suggestions besides going the USB route?
    (USB isn't fast enough for a good picture IMHO)

    In most cases, I'd rather have a large tower than a "book-pc", but since I'll be running this 24/7, a 50-100 watt power supply should hopefully cut back on my electric bill.

    After taking a peek at the article, I gotta admit it does look cool. Too bad it is not black ;-)
    • Yeah, use a firewire interface. The Formac Synchrotech [synchrotech.com] is a professional solution. I didn't see a consumer version in my 30 seconds of searching.
    • Take a look at the mini-itx boards out there. I have one of the early cuts with a 566mhz fanless cpu (at 2.8W). The 666mhz should be out, and the 800 & 1G versions can be modded to be fanless with some creative Zalman's CNPS6000-Cu cooler mounting. (might try underclocking an athlon too). Anyhow, I digress...

      The 566 is fast enough for divx and mp3 on linux. It has one pci slot, which I use for a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card. I send video capture to another box that has the fast / hot HDD, proc, and video card. I'm going to have to pick up one of those 90 degree pci port benders to give me the low profile case, but the same should work with a TV tuner card. If I can fit my sound card, a tv card should fit...

      • Re:I want one, (Score:2, Informative)

        by AKnightCowboy ( 608632 )
        How about one of these Via Eden 533MHz chips in a mini-ITX case like this one [caseoutlet.com]. For about $200 seems to be a lot cheaper than a lower end 300MHz processor. I can't see the other box since the site is slashdotted but the 2677R case seems small enough to me to be used as a set top box complete with an external power supply brick like a Mac G4 Cube. You could easily build one of these with no moving parts since the Eden needs no fan.
    • Does this computer even have a PCI slot? I could only get to the press release, but it seems to imply you can only really expand it via PCMCIA or USB. (Are there TV tuners for PCMCIA?)
    • I've never seen a "low profile" TV capture card. In fact, I've never even seen anything other than an ethernet card for sale in the low profile form factor. I've used a bunch of ~$40 V2000 bookPC cases to make some x-terminals for work, and I'd love to use one to make a home theater DivX/MP3 player. Except they use those stupid low profile slots so I can't stick any PCI cards in the thing. I want to get NTSC and toslink output somehow.

      If you want video input, you could get an external DV capture box or even a DV video camera. These convert your analog video into DV, which gets sent to your computer via firewire. Now you just have to find a motherboard with builtin firewire or a low profile firewire card. Another option would be the canopus advc50, it's about the size of a pci card but is designed to fit in a 5 1/4" drive bay and uses a harddisk power connector. Get a motherboard with an internal firewire header and you could have a totally internal solution. These external DV boxes cost something like $200-$300, but are much better quality than those $60 PCI capture cards.

      You can also try to find a case that uses a PCI riser to give one or two pci slots parallel to the motherboard. Most PCI capture cards that I've seen aren't very large, and should be able to fit. I can't find any cases like this that would make a nice home theater style component. There are those overpriced shuttle cubes cases, but a cube is not the right shape.

    • Re:I want one, (Score:2, Interesting)

      by kko ( 472548 )
      Hey, while you're looking at the OpenBrick, you could also check out Via's Eden.... you can get a nice Via C3@800, sitting on a mini-itx mobo inside a small case with a ~50W power supply...
      check out www.mini-itx.com [mini-itx.com]...
      I'm using one of these babies right now (I'm playing with the 533MHz version), and I'm getting the 800MHz version in about two weeks...
      I'll just slap 128MB RAM, and a 15GiB hdd I've got laying around... BTW, it runs just fine with the OpenBSD 3.1 GENERIC kernel...

      what????!!!!! *BSD is dying???!!!!! AIYEEEEEEEE!!!

  • Google cash! (Score:2, Informative)

    by samfreed ( 572658 )
    Here is a copy of the main page, from google. [google.com]

    (My moment of glory as a Karma Whore...)

  • Ok, enough with the Google Cache's !!! (Score:3, Funny)

    by CySurflex ( 564206 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @04:35PM (#4304371)
    In a related story, due to Google's secret page-rank algorithm and over 200 messages in this thread linking to "Google Cache", a search for the words "Google Cache" brings up open brick.

  • Dual NIC (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mmca ( 180858 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @04:35PM (#4304376) Homepage
    For firewall use, I would like to see dual NICs.
    They would make great IDS nodes.
    $300 bucks is a pretty good deal for a computer that small with that amount of proc power.

    -M
    • For firewall use, I would like to see dual NICs. They would make great IDS nodes. $300 bucks is a pretty good deal for a computer that small with that amount of proc power.

      Do you need that much processing power for a firewall? I run mine with a P166, and I don't see any issues. I doubt the CPU gets utilized much at all. It is quiet, doesn't take much power, and isn't too large. And it cost a lot less than $300. :-)

      I am not ragging on your post, just that I wouldn't consider this a good firewall, it seems like more power than is necessary. There are off-the-shelf firewalls smaller and less powerful.

    • Re:Dual NIC (Score:4, Informative)

      by hazard ( 2541 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @05:41PM (#4304611)
      Take a look here: Nagasaki Thin Client [nagasaki.com.tw], there are versions with three NICs. OpenBrick actually looks to be a rebranded MS2100.
      • That web site looks much better than the one I found with a little googling.

        The original design seems to come from Lucky Star [lucky-star.com.tw] in taiwan, but they went out of business earlier this year. Their PDFs show a lot more details of the boards and connectors.

        Nagasaki looks like they have picked up the product line and are continuing with it. It would sure be nice to get a few of these for cheaper than the 470 Euros the OpenBrick guys are reselling them for. I can't google up any other distis here in Europe this late at night. Maybe I'll try again during the working week.

        I've learned the chinese/taiwanese shops in the big cities are quite willing to get in exotic parts like these boxen. Every one of them seems to have an uncle or a brother as a contact in taiwan who knows someone, etc. It just takes a little social engineering to get them to dig for you, on the hope you'll buy lots of those components.

        I've got a project coming up to make small, cheap, customisable firewalls supporting DSL or cable clients, no fans or noise or hard disks. Has to be half the price of a cisco pix 501, which are on ebay for around 500 euros. This MS2100/OpenBrick box would almost do it, except I don't want to be powering a sound card, parallel port, NTSC video, or all that other useless cruft.

        the AC

    • Re:Dual NIC (Score:5, Informative)

      by friscolr ( 124774 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @05:50PM (#4304647) Homepage
      in case you haven't seen these before- www.soekris.com/ [soekris.com]
      486/133, 3 NICs, 4.85" x 5.7" mobos, 64 mb RAM, plus dedicated encryption boards for $332

      There's also http://www.bcmcom.com/tech/BOX-3410/BOX-3410.htm [bcmcom.com]
      Geode 300mhz, 2 NICs in 106mm (W) x 178mm (L) x 65mm (H)

      and http://www.nexcom.com/product/ebc/ebs1563p/ [nexcom.com]
      VIA C3 processor, 3 NICs, 177 (W) x 51 (H) x 228.6 (D) mm

      Depending on what you need, you could buy an old laptop off of ebay and get 2 nics for it.

      • One of the most informative posts on Slashdot. Thanks!

        And note how the BOX-3410 comes with an built-in power supply, too! Much better than the product featured in this story.
    • For firewall use, I would like to see dual NICs.

      Yep, I've been looking for a small form factor, fanless PC to use as a firewall for a while. They all seem to only come with a single NIC. So when I saw that this openbrick did indeed come with a dual-NIC option, I was reaching for my wallet to order one there and then (seriously). It was only when I got the "configure your box" page, that I saw the smallprint saying the dual-NIC option was only available for orders of 70 units or more. Sigh. Yet another adherent to the "how to lose potential customers in one easy step" school of business...

  • These tiny form factor servers are interesting, and as a gaget guy I find them facinating. However, I find it hard to see the real world application for these devices. Sure there are places where having things small makes a difference (sailboats, cars, etc). But, couldn't you just run a laptop?

    Does anyone have any actual experience with these small form factor boards in the real world?
    • I haven't seen them as the web site is slashed, but mini pcs that don't make any noise make for all sorts of uses. I want one to use as a internet server for the rest of the house that I can leave on, and not hear the thing run 24/7 and not worry about it over heating or the hard drive from breaking down. Also it would be nice to have a pc that made no noise and was fast booting (I assume its fast booting as its using a solid state drive)for when you just want to surf the web or play a simple game. I've been using PCs for 7 years now and that sound from power supply fan,cpu fan,HD,cdrom,and dvd drive still gets on my nerves
    • Don't have experience with 'em, but I can see how they would be useful. Laptops are terribly expensive compared to a small form factor PC. A lot of the price of the laptop is also in the screen, which isn't really needed for a lot of applications (server, firewall, DV system, etc.)

      DennyK

    • These tiny servers would make great firewalls for laboratory environments, where often you want something more flexible (bridging [washington.edu], IPv6 support, etc.) than the proprietary low-end NAT-firewall-switch devices but without a tower case lurking in the corner of the room consuming far more space and power than needed.

  • Clusters (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bwt ( 68845 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @04:41PM (#4304399)
    It would be *very* cool if these things could be clustered together to make a scalable server. Need a database server? Then get 32 of these, each with a HD for ~$10K and cluster them together. Each comes with one HD, so you've got your RAID array. Need more power next year? Add 8 more.

    With the coming onslaught of DRM on faster processors, the obvious solution is to find better ways to scale existing hardware products.
    • Uhhh... no.

      The solution is to not use hardware that has integrated DRM. It's the same old thing as before. If hardware manufacturers push proprietary solutions that don't fill a need that consumers want, the products will fail. It has happened before, and I'm sure that if consumers don't want DRM hardware, these solutions will fail, too.

      Buy a Mac or buy a workstation if you don't want DRM. You can get a 64 bit DEC Alpha really cheap now.

      • Re:Clusters (Score:3, Insightful)

        by bwt ( 68845 )
        Uhhh... no.

        The solution is to not use hardware that has integrated DRM.

        I'm not sure why you are disagreeing. This doesn't have DRM, nor is it likely to ever have it if the existing design doesn't need to change to accomodate increasing performance demands.

        To expand my idea: most hardware has become a commodity. There really is very little reason to fund "innovation" in it when that innovation is directed towards how to prevent us from doing certain things. I'd rather have the innovation directed towards providing me *cheaper* scalable interchangable parts that implement the existing hardware feature sets. Freeze the hardware and just buy more of it if you need more performance.

        Buy a Mac or buy a workstation if you don't want DRM. You can get a 64 bit DEC Alpha really cheap now.
        Yuck. Where's the fun in that? If you want those platforms, have at it. You haven't given me a single reason not to think that clustering small commodity items is not a good way, nor an interesting way, to solve computing problems.
    • With the coming onslaught of DRM on faster processors, the obvious solution is to find better ways to scale existing hardware products.

      I dunno, I would think the obvious solution would be to find sane [apple.com] companies [ibm.com] that are working on next-gen processors [slashdot.org] sans DRM [slashdot.org]. Maybe I just have a different view.

      --Dan
      • you do have a different view. A shortsighted one maybe.

        Do you think that a few years from now, if most of the content available to people is palladium only, Apple and it's 5% market share will hold out?

        No way, they're gonna fold faster than a 2 pair vs a flush. They will be FORCED to add DRM.

        • Re:Clusters (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Sentry21 ( 8183 )
          You present an interesting but insubstantial point.

          The rest of the world hates the idea of DRM - by and large, it's an American idea, and as much as you'd like to think otherwise, American media isn't worth sacrificing freedom for - the few good things that escape do so because they slip under the radar. I could easily (and largely have, already) abandoned American media. I suspect the rest of the world could do so as well. Perhaps the US would see its position as an informational power change.

          Just a thought.

          --Dan
          • 1. You may think DRM is an american idea, but when you look at the companies behind it, most are multinationals. Sony, Microsoft, Intel, AMD etc etc. 2. The rest of the world uses the same pc hardware and will have DRM built in. 3. How much do you want to bet that foreign media companies won't follow suit? after all Americans don't like DRM either. No consumer does.

    • 7 OpenBricks in a 1U enclosure:
      http://www.storever.com/news/pr3

  • AMAZING!!! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Eric_Cartman_South_P ( 594330 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @04:46PM (#4304420)
    Add a 17 inch screen and you've got a new iMac!

  • Unfortunately (Score:5, Informative)

    by __aahlyu4518 ( 74832 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @04:51PM (#4304444)
    If you look at this page [mandrakestore.com], you'll see that for some of the features you need a non-free XFree 3.3.6 driver. Another fun detail on that page : description says : 300 to 400 EUR while it is sold for 590 EUR. But it definately is cool. Once they sell it for less than that 590 (which would buy you a nice PC WITH storage), and that non-free Xfree 3.3.6 driver thing is solved... it is a really nice box.

  • Soekris (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ksw2 ( 520093 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [retaeyebo]> on Saturday September 21, 2002 @04:58PM (#4304468) Homepage
    I've been eye-balling a similar system over at Soekris [soekris.com]. Same idea, but with 2 or 3 NICs integrated.

  • Too much money!! (Score:5, Informative)

    by nweaver ( 113078 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @04:59PM (#4304472) Homepage
    300 to 400 euros is WAY too much money for what you get, when you compare with things like the Via Epia motherboard (available for $130 at outpost [outpost.com]. The Via Epia has an 800 Mhz x86 processor, SDRAM slots, is 18 cm on a side, and has practically everything you need but memory, storage and an ATX power supply. They even have a completely fanless 500 MHz version (althouh you can't get that version from Fry's).
    • I agree those ITX form factor board is very nice. However, mounting it back to an ATX case just defeat the original purpose. I cannot find any nice smaller case say, in outpost.com. What do you guys normally do? DIY case??

      The bigger hassle is we usually need 2-3 nics for this sort of apps. ITX board above cannot do that.

  • Filesystems... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Vengie ( 533896 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @04:59PM (#4304473)

    One thing about all the compact flash stuff. Typical flashable memory can only be "erased" on the order of 100,000 times. Now, many of you are saying "sure, this isn't a problem" -- but i dont think most /.'ers realize how many temp files Linux (and Operating Systems in general) create. Unfortunately, using Fat32 or NTFS(if you were "Gasp" running nt/2k), you would be repeatledy using the same flash sectors, quickly burning them out.


    This means the only really useful filesystem is LFS (see the SPRITE project -- http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/projects/sprite/sprite. html ) and even at that, you need to be able to have some mechanism to rotate your two checkpoints or else THEY get burnt out.
    So no, you can't have a box that has no hard drive, as of yet, unless you have very specialized uses for which lfs work well. (sequential writes/reads, etc)
    Wee! Final exam questions with applications in the real world!

    • Re:Filesystems... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Roadmaster ( 96317 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @05:12PM (#4304513) Homepage Journal
      "but i dont think most /.'ers realize how many temp files Linux (and Operating Systems in general) create. "

      So, just mount /tmp/ on a ram drive...

      Actually, there are many projects, a lot of them aimed at diskless workstations, that do just that, and even symlink all other commonly changing files so that they actually reside on /tmp.
    • for what you would use these things for that's not a problem, if the things a simple web, internet server,mp3 server , or just a mini game emulator, your not going to write to disk that often. for logs you can point to a ram drive, save game files wont be a problem ether (the ps2 flash cards hold up just fine). Your not going to be doing things on this thing that require lots of tmp files or file rewrites (if you run gcc on the thing your just asking for problems)
    • CompactFlash cards have internal wear-leveling, so you can use regular filesystems. If FAT was so unsuitable for flash, you wouldn't see digital cameras using it.

      For regular flash, there are specialized flash filesystems such as JFFS and the recently-announced YAFFS.

      The parent post seems to be a perfect example of just enough knowledge to be dangerous.

  • Future Conversation... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Cyno01 ( 573917 ) <Cyno01@hotmail.com> on Saturday September 21, 2002 @05:05PM (#4304491) Homepage
    Boss: Why is the server down?
    Sysadmin Guy: Well sir, I think I lost it.
    Boss: Lost it??
    Sysadmin Guy: Well, i had it in my pocket, it must've fallen out when...

  • Any better than Shuttle? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by LinuxInDallas ( 73952 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @05:10PM (#4304508)
    What would make this any better than the cool looking mini computers from shuttle? This thing is $489 and I just saw that Fry's has the Shuttle P4 computer for about $300. The OpenBrick machine has a PCMCIA and CF slot but unless you are a laptop user you most likely aren't wanting PCMCIA anyway and CF card readers that plug into USB are fairly cheap.
  • Sounds ideal as an Xterm running Linux. How much are they? The site's not there.

  • whoa.... (Score:2, Funny)

    by drik00 ( 526104 )
    Could you imagine a beowulf cluster of these?

    I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry... ...but noone else had said it and it was KILLING me (like when Cartman has to finish Come Sail Away everytime someone starts singing it)

    my bad.

    J

    • Found a link from a link of a small shop in Lille selling chassis [storever.com] for these bricks. Maybe one of these would be a good place to start building a beowulf cluster.

      However, on their webpage they state:
      OpenChassis are sold to computer experts only.
      So don't mention you saw it on /., or they'll kick you out of the shop :-)

      the AC

  • Other options (Score:3, Interesting)

    by -tji ( 139690 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @05:21PM (#4304544) Journal
    There are several other small boards that would make excellent Linux network servers. But, most of the ones I have seen are not sold in small quantities.

    Such as this board: Nexcom EBC563 [nexcom.com]

    It uses the low power / low heat VIA C3. The C3 is MUCH faster than the Geode used in the "OpenBrick". It has 3 NIC's, making it a great firewall.

    Now, only if I could buy it, in a small case..
  • I like the fact that it can use a compact flash card as a hard drive--this means less moving parts to be damaged if it's mounted in a car. The small size would be put to good use in a car unit as well.
    • Yes! My first two thoughts were:

      Car mounted netstumbler unit for permanent wardriving. When you get home, the unit detects your home WLAN, and transfers the day's results to your awaiting home server. I'm working on some scripts to do this now with a laptop.

      Cheap secure WAPs, running SSH/IPSec to force all users to communicate through a tunnel. Cheaper than the cisco units by a tiny amount, but even better, they'll run linux or BSD which could allow some serious customization.

      I've been wardriving on two vacations now with an expensive laptop hidden in the back of the car. Not trusting most neighborhoods where I parked, I ended up yanking the laptop every evening to haul around with me. Not optimal. It would be nice to have a small low power unit which could survive random power cuts every time you stop the motor. Something that could be mounted in the boot, with an external antenna camouflaged on the rear deck.

      the AC
      470 Euros for the cheapest unit, ttc? Fuck me harder guys, these are just some cheap taiwanese SBCs you are importing!

  • Bah! This is what you need for a diskless firewall (Score:4, Informative)

    by ^MB^ ( 153039 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @05:28PM (#4304567)
    Lex LIGHT barebones system
    Lex Systems [lex.com.tw]
    Its tiny, powerfull, and has tripple ethernet... what more could you ask for?

    well maybe a fanless cpu.
    -Nick

    now if i can only find somewhere that sells it....

  • I'm glad to see the rising interest in small form-factor. This one's not for me - it seems more server-oriented, but that doesn't mean to say I don't appreciate its design.

    At the moment I'm waiting for Shuttle's SN40 - the Athlon/nForce 2-based equivalent of their SS51. The main attraction for me? It's quiet. I'm an amateur musician, and I use MIDI a fair amount. I can say that having a standard PC sitteng next to me, fans screaming like a banshee and radiating all the industrial design glamour of a multi-storey car park, is not condusive to writing music. The quiet Shuttle boxes would seem much better suited to that role.

    Cheers,
    Ian

    (Oh - why not use a Mac for my MIDI? Because the machine also has to be general purpose, and there's still no UK version of Quicken for the Mac)

  • I recently put together a web and mail server [trailing-edge.com] based on a mini-ITX motherboard with a Via C3 processor on it [caseoutlet.com]. It cost less than $300 altogether and installing Linux was a breeze.
  • My Theory(tm) is that the cost of a computing device should be proportional to its targetted end-use. For example: I can buy a full-fledged PC from some mega-vendor for about $500. Now, why would I pay $300 for some super-slim version, which can be used as either a firewall or an Xterminal or something? If the functionality (or typical use) of the device is limited thusly, so should the price! For this kind of device, I'd pay at most $100, tops. You can't sell these devices en masse based just on the novelty factor, ignoring the cost.
  • Names are pretty similar, but these [plathome.co.jp] are definitely better for use as a firewall - dual Ethernet for a start, and they run a lot cooler. A 200MHz PPC405 is enough for most network applications, and you can install a 2.5" HDD if you need one.
  • http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/computing/5a98.shtm l

    or for the lazy...Click Here [thinkgeek.com]

    This is news? I'm sure this system fits the bill...or so to speak.
  • A Briq [terrasoftsolutions.com] with OSX makes a nice addition to anyone's drab beige PC:) With the dual-NIC option, you can have your firewall right above your DVD drive. It's a bit more than 400 Euros though.
  • To current and next generation of mini-itx?
    The site's currently slashdotted so I can't see the specs,
    But the mini-itx platform is really something worth a look at.
    And the next generation will even have the C3 1ghz via cpu and mpg2 hardware acelleration!!!
    The perfect media/desktop box...
  • If I took the screen and keyboard off my laptop, removed the battery and the built in speakers it would be barely larger than a cell phone. The form factor of the harddrive and the bay for the cdrom are what would make the remainder boxy.

    All I'm saying is that a core pc could be made as something little larger than a dongle on the powercord that connects to it.

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