I've sorta had this idea running around in my head for a while. With all the low cost residential gateway/routers out there on the market I still use a Linux box to do my routing since I like to have things like traffic shaping, IDSes, logs, and SSH at my disposal. However, I don't like the noise, or the power an extra machine running 24/7 uses.
So I'm starting to look around at low power consumption PCs that have small form factors. I've looked at some of the Shuttle ones which seem promising like SS40 and SS50 (new models similar to the SV24 that everyone's seen) which take Athlons or P4s respectively. I've also looked at really tiny ones like the Espresso and Capuccino PCs from Saintsong (their site's having issues, try here) but they only have 1 LAN port and no expansion abilities.
In the interest of lowering noise and power consumption I also bought a dirt cheap IDE->Compactflash Type II adapter so that I could do away with a hard drive. I'll have to find a small linux distro that will fit onto a 64 or 128MB card but that shouldn't be too hard.
Via has a promising looking ITX board but their C3 chip is soldered on there locking out any hopes for future upgrades.
Is there anything out there that anyone here is using that kind of fits in with what I'm looking for? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Gaidin
PS-I figured motherboards would be the most appropriate forum for this though I guess it could go in Networking or General Hardware.
So I'm starting to look around at low power consumption PCs that have small form factors. I've looked at some of the Shuttle ones which seem promising like SS40 and SS50 (new models similar to the SV24 that everyone's seen) which take Athlons or P4s respectively. I've also looked at really tiny ones like the Espresso and Capuccino PCs from Saintsong (their site's having issues, try here) but they only have 1 LAN port and no expansion abilities.
In the interest of lowering noise and power consumption I also bought a dirt cheap IDE->Compactflash Type II adapter so that I could do away with a hard drive. I'll have to find a small linux distro that will fit onto a 64 or 128MB card but that shouldn't be too hard.
Via has a promising looking ITX board but their C3 chip is soldered on there locking out any hopes for future upgrades.
Is there anything out there that anyone here is using that kind of fits in with what I'm looking for? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Gaidin
PS-I figured motherboards would be the most appropriate forum for this though I guess it could go in Networking or General Hardware.
