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Hardware Hacking Technology

Recommendations for a Single Board Computer? 49

Posted by Cliff from the small-but-capable dept.
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."
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Recommendations for a Single Board Computer? More

Recommendations for a Single Board Computer?

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  • VIA EPIA (Score:3, Informative)

    by ERJ ( 600451 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @12:53PM (#14211309)
    Probably VIA EPIA would do the trick. Maybe something like this:

    VIA EPIA NL [via.com.tw]
    • Probably VIA EPIA would do the trick. Maybe something like this:

      I have an EPIA M10000 running linux at home as a fileserver (samba, nfs, ftp), mailserver (imap + webmail) and internet gateway.
      It does not use much power and it is small. With its 1GHz CPU and 256MB DDR RAM it perfect for this use.

      • I like the EPIAs, actually, quite a lot. I have been using an MII 12000 for some time now as a workstation, and it works quite well. It triple-boots Ubuntu, Slackware and XP, though I'm probably going to blow away the XP partitions very soon, as I finally got around to getting WINE installed and configured.

        Anyway, it's a small board, 17cm x 17cm, fairly low profile, fits Mini-ITX, Flex-ATX, Micro-ATX and ATX cases, has a 1.2GHz processor (600MHz is available), has IDE, floppy, parallel, serial, USB, fi

        • I have the 533 MHz model with a gig of ram and quite like it as well. So far it runs win 2k though that could stand to be replaced. How do you find X works with the onboard graphics?
          • I have the 533 MHz model with a gig of ram and quite like it as well. So far it runs win 2k though that could stand to be replaced. How do you find X works with the onboard graphics?

            I run it as a moatly headless network server, so I don't have X running on it, but it should perform nicely for normal tasks (* or 16 MB video, SVGA resolution). 3D graphics will probably don't work well.

          • How do you find X works with the onboard graphics?

            Well enough under Slackware, though you need to do some tinkering. Very well under Ubuntu, no tinkering involved.

    • I tried to move my home file server (SAMBA and NFS) from a 350MHz G3 tower to a VIA EPIA board. It was a miserable mistake. VIA loads some extra-crappy consumer-quality chips onto their EPIA boards. Not only did IDE and NIC traffic hose the CPU more than it should, but the quality of the VGA output was low, it was blurry. The 800MHz EPIA was half the speed of the G3, and the fan made it louder.

      If I were you I'd get a box designed to handle massixe I/O, not a cheap consumer board. Get your hands on an old Ma

      • Re:A word against EPIA (Score:3, Informative)

        by LoRdTAW ( 99712 )
        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

  • linksys nslu2 (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Yrrebnarg ( 629526 )
    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.

  • Via might have one soon... (Score:3, Informative)

    by deque_alpha ( 257777 ) <qhartman AT gmail DOT com> on Thursday December 08, 2005 @12:55PM (#14211325) Journal
    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/ [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.
  • Perhaps I don't understand your requirement for a 'single board' solution?

  • Underclock... (Score:2, Informative)

    by harrkev ( 623093 )
    If this is just an attempt at reducing power usage, why not use an old mobo/processor and underclock the thing to death. You should be able to get an Athlon 64 to run at 500 MHz or so by scaling back the multiplier and FSB speed. You would likely not even need any fans, except possibly for the power supply. And even if this is not exactly the most optimal solution, the money saved in purchasing used, cheap hardware will more than offset the amount of extra electricity that this thing might take when comp

  • Portwell (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 08, 2005 @01:13PM (#14211499)
    is the answer [portwell.com].

  • One word (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Solder Fumes ( 797270 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @01:18PM (#14211557)
    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.

  • Maybe a linkstation (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bjpirt ( 251795 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @01:23PM (#14211599)

    I have been looking for similar reasons at this kind of thing. I think I am going to go for a Linkstation [buffalotech.com] by Buffalo. It is a network attached storage device which has quite a lively hardware hacking community [linkstationwiki.org], 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 [linkstationwiki.org] (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 [revogear.com] and they actively encourage hacking it.

    HTH

    BJPirt

    • Yes, love my new Buffalo, very capable little box which solves any number of needs with low power and great flexibility.

      Thanks for the link to the Linkstation community hacking site, wasn't aware that even existed. Looks like my little Buffalo has more capability and potential than I realized.

      Ooh, deja woo: This reminds me of the days when you could find useful information on Slashdot and not just links to press releases and stupid quasi-tech related items for gossipy posters pushing jebus-in-the-sky, Georg

  • Er, what is wrong with the soekris? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by millisa ( 151093 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @01:24PM (#14211618)
    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).

    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 . . .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). . .)

    • Er, what is wrong with the iBase? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "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."

      The IB705 SBC is for the multimedia market with SATA connectors.

      http://www.technoland.com/pr_ib705. [technoland.com]
  • 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

  • Okay, so it's not quite a dupe, but there is a hell of an overlap!

    Look here [slashdot.org] for a similar discussion on ask slashdot.... one month ago to the day, even!

  • Two words (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mr.Coffee ( 168480 ) * <rhysfeezled@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Thursday December 08, 2005 @02:40PM (#14212335) Homepage
    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.

  • NAS Servers (Score:2, Interesting)

    by relifram66 ( 899283 )
    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 whatev
  • The Routerboard 200 series [routerboard.com] might work for you - they are CPU-limited like the Soekris boards, but have onboard USB and IDE (though it's the 44-pin laptop-style IDE port). If you're going for crazy paranoid reliability, you can boot from a CompactFlash drive. The 230s also have a couple of PCMCIA slots, so you could even conceivably go wireless with it. There's one SO-DIMM RAM slot on the bottom, miniPCI, and even a "regular" PCI slot (though you can't use both at once). Aside from the lack of monitor and ke
  • Why not just get an off lease small form factor machine? A couple of weekends ago I picked up a 1.7GHz P4 HP Vectra unit for $160 CAD. Dropped in some spare RAM and a 200GB EIDE drive. Presto bingo bongo, instant whateverIwant box.
  • Intel released their single-board-computer into the Asian market about a year ago. Low power(12W TDP), small size(about 190x170mm), and cheap performance. It has a 1.0GHZ Shelton CPU (Cacheless 130NM PentiumM), built in sound, video, lan, usb, etc. Only thing this board is lacking is a serial port, but that only matters if you actually use one. I use one of these for my mini-torrent box. You can pick them up on ebay for less than $100 shipped. Just search for Intel+ITX, there is a guy that puts up 1 or two
  • For the love of don't use a Geode based SBC. I've whinged about this before, but they're awful. For one thing all the media hardware (frame buffer and audio) is software emulated in the slow BIOS, but the serial ports don't work (don't know if you care), DMA crashes the board, the 'watchdog' is software and therefore useless; and finally interrupts act if they feel like it. My day job has shown me just how s*it thick these boards are. They look nice and fanless, ideal for MPD or Slimserver, but they're not
    • I totally fucking agree with you. I've been poking around this shitbox Geode SBC I have to get working, and it's been a swim in Shit Lake. For me the serial ports do OK but I've had a hell of a time getting a simple, standard Prism chipset wireless card to be minimally reliable. Signs point to retard-smithed interrupt handling. If you turn on shadowing in the BIOS it actually reaches the boot screen in less than 20 seconds, but framebuffer is still slow as fingerpainting on my wall with my own shit. A hobby
  • SBC boards are hideously expensive. They're rated for industrial environments, specialty, low volume items with a lot of engineering in them.

    Mini ITX is completely self contained, reasonably low power, and the big innovation was snap-on DCDC converters from a variety of companies. Mini-box.com is the only place I know offhand that sells them. There's a couple really slick models with compact flash drives, PCMCIA slots, dual ethernet boards.. and they're all under $200. Just add ram!

    From my experience, they'
  • Use a mini-itx.

  • Ramblings... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by krisk21 ( 934501 )
    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
  • the cheapest route will be a hackmeal of wireless gear.

    The good news is the router. Small and prepackaged, wireless and good ole trusty 802.3 ethernet, 2-7 watts power, some have USB 2.0 connectivity. Most are 133-200 mhz, with the great mode being 200 mhz, however there are some faster. 200 mhz should be plenty for what you want; the routers all have excellent DMA capabilities for shuffling data around. No problems decoding a couple mp3's while doing some file access. As an interesting bonus, a number

  • Thanks all (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Lardmonster ( 302990 ) *
    Thanks, everyone, for your replies. I think you've just confirmed what I already knew:

    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 :-) so it makes sense to have a lit
  • I've had a slimp3/squeezebox for years and I've noticed that slimserver runs a lot better - esp. with a large collection - on a fast machine with enough RAM. I just upgraded my server from a 1Ghz P3 to a 3000+ amd64 and everything runs a lot smoother. (and I'm not even transcoding)

  • A lot of the machines in my shop do little but shovel stuff between a hard disk and an ethernet port perhaps by way of a web and/or sql server. Keyboard, mouse, vga, usb, parallel are all distractions to the main task.

    My ideal motherboard would have a single ethernet connector and be POE powered. The official POE standard supports only 13.5 watts and I want to be able to spin one of the larger hard disks available so I am prepared to accept a second 12v. power connector which implies an internal inverter.

  • I'm a bit late, but maybe someone still reads this. A possible suggestion: WYSE Winterm devices. Although they don't have an IDE connector, you can get them pretty much for free. They're quite powerful, can have USB ports (so maybe you can use an USB external disk), and memory can be extended with standard SODIMMs. And for a while now, you can run Linux on them. See winterm.gaast.net [gaast.net] for more information. :-)

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