[Techtalk] tiny homebuilt appliance?

[Peggy Baker]

Today's NY Times had an article on the subject as well, together with an 
adorable photo of a PC built inside of an ET doll....

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/23/technology/circuits/23tiny.html?8cir

At 10:32 PM 10/23/2003, Elizabeth Barham wrote:

>Carla writes:
>
> > I'm looking for an alternative to using old PCs for firewall/gateway
> > and other specialized servers. They're big and clunky. I've heard
> > here and there of little computers-on-boards- anyone know what I'm
> > talking about? For an Internet gateway, for example, all I need is
> > CPU, memory, and storage. Not a whole huge box with expansion slots
> > and fans and masses of circuitry I'll never use. Something with a
> > serial connection and Ethernet.
> >
> > For a commercial box, I really like Snapgear. But I'd like to build
> > my own.  I'm not sure what to look for, I've been googling and
> > getting confused.
>
>    I've been thinking about doing something similar. I was using an
>old 486 as a firewall which I replaced with a D-Link wireless router
>which has added wireless to the house but its not nearly as good of a
>firewall as the 486 although of course its smaller, quieter and uses
>less electricity.
>
>    So I'm just passing on this little link although you probably know
>about it:
>
>       http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT2016997232.html
>
>at the bottom there is a link about building your own single board
>computer (SBC).
>
>    I've been considering dowing something like this for a long time,
>too. It seems to me that a little device that can use a flash-disk
>card as its main medium would work wonderfully as the 486 I did use
>had only a 120 MB hard disk drive.
>
>hth, Elizabeth
>_______________________________________________
>Techtalk mailing list
>Techtalk at linuxchix.org
>http://mailman.linuxchix.org/mailman/listinfo/techtalk

Peggy Baker
Database Designs Associates, Inc.
Boston   (617) 335-9700
Chicago  (312) 225-3095
www.dbdes.com