[Wylug-discuss] Small quiet low-power linux boxes

[Jim Jackson]

On Sun, 9 Sep 2007, Nigel Metheringham wrote:

> I've been running a Mini-ITX VIA CPU system at home for a few years, and
> its getting a little long in the tooth (on its second PSU).
>
> Has anyone any suggestions and/or personal experience of small lower
> power fanless (ideally - certainly very quiet) linux capable boxes?
>
> The box currently handles mail (IMAP + SMTP including spam scanning),
> some web stuff (although thats not a major function and could be moved)
> and a few general purpose bits and pieces. The VIA CPU is convenient in
> that I can just run a standard linux distro (it runs Fedora). I am
> thinking about making more of the storage available as a network drive
> to the network.

I run a GEODE based SBC for my home server and mine is pretty long in the
tooth too, so I've been looking around.

Because I've already got one of their boards, I've been looking at a new
arm board from Technologics, the TS7800 ...

  http://www.embeddedarm.com/epc/ts7800-spec-d.htm

It probably a bit pricey, and doesn't ship till later this year.

> I was wondering if any of the NAS boxes are up to this sort of thing, or
> are they all completely crippled with insufficient CPU and RAM to do
> more than one function.

I've also looked at the Buffalo Kuro Box PRO, arm9 based box...

  http://www.revogear.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=KURO%2DBOX%2FPRO

(not to be confused with the Kuro Box HG WR, which is a powerpc based box)

there's a wiki for this box at

  http://www.kurobox.com/mwiki/index.php/Kurobox-Pro_International_Main_Page


There's also the Dlink DN232

  http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=509

  http://wiki.dns323.info

I've also looked at the Armadillo-9, an ARM SBC 2W with IDE and VGA and
Linux...

  http://www.atmark-techno.com/en/products/armadillo/a9

but the USB is only 12M while still being USB2!


Not forgetting  the LinkSys NSLU2 :-) but I think you probably had this in
mind when you were thinking of restricted memory etc.

cheers
Jim