This was already posted:

http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/09/10/28/1758226/The-Software-Router-As-MiFi-Killer

Plus, this is obviously a sales ploy to get people interested in the "Connectify" product.

This is probably a plant from someone connected with Connectify.

Just about every machine has some way to do NAT. The first time I ever did NAT was via an Amiga under AmigaDOS 3.1.

Why is this discussion worthy?

NetBSD can be compiled with no FPU calls so that FPU emulation isn't necessary, and therefore defective LC040s can be used. I posted a set a few weeks ago:

http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-mac68k/2009/10/13/msg000244.html

But to answer your question, yes, I have a full m68040 in my Quadra 605. The 250 gig hard drive is a laptop SATA drive in an Acard SATA-SCSI enclosure (ARS 2000SU). They're not cheap, but I suppose I was a bit sentimental, too. The only limitation that the ROMs and OS have is that the boot partition on a drive must be HFS, not HFS+, but you can run Mac OS 8.1 and use any size SCSI drive up to a full two terabytes. Or, as in my setup, you can use a small boot partition and the rest for NetBSD.

The memory is easy - 128 meg 72 pin SIMMs aren't very expensive. You can find them on eBay if you look for memory for Cobalt Raq2 systems. Since the Cobalt is a 1U machine, the SIMMs won't be very large and will fit just fine.

Here are some of the machines I run:

Cobalt Raq2 with 250 MHz MIPS processor, 256 megs of memory, and 500 gig hard drive - about 30 watts.
Mac mini, 2.26 GHz Core 2 Duo, 4 gigs, 500 gig hard drive - about 20 watts when doing stuff (it maxes out at about 35 watts when the CPUs are pegged).
Quadra 605 (yes, I like classics), 40 MHz m68040, 132 megs of memory, 250 gig hard drive, about 22 watts.

If you want REALLY low power, pick up a Jornada 728 or the likes. It takes THREE watts (the meter shows four watts momentarily now and then), with a 206 MHz StrongARM, 64 megs of memory, and a 16 gig CF card. However, this doesn't help if you want to do lots of file hosting, but I figured it was worth a mention because it takes so little power. I run several Jornadas (including the 690, which uses SH3 processor) as DNS servers running BIND.

The one that might match your requirements best, though, is a Plextor PX-EH25L and the like. You can put in whatever size hard drive you like, and if you want, you can even get the new low power 5900 RPM drives which take half the power of a typical hard drive. It has 64 megs of memory, a 266 MHz SH4 processor, and two USB 2 ports which can be used with a CD or DVD drive, a second ethernet, more storage, or whatever you want to connect. With an inefficient 7200 RPM drive, it takes less than 20 watts (15 to 18), plus it is incredibly small and so far it's been completely stable.

Note that on all of these machines I run NetBSD because I prefer having one consistent OS across all of my architectures, but if you don't mind maintaining a different version of GNU/Linux for whichever you get, you'll be happy with any of the lower power devices.