[Techtalk] tiny homebuilt appliance?

Akkana Peck akkana at shallowsky.com
Sun Oct 26 10:52:30 EST 2003


Carla asks about building small non-clunky specialized linux servers.

Telsa Gwynne writes:
> I have heard of broken laptops being recycled into firewalls, 
> but I presume they got Linux installed on them when they had 
> working monitors.

One advantage of using laptops is that at least some of them use the
low power, low heat, quiet processors that you can't get in a desktop
board, like the low-power Intels, or, even better, Transmeta chips.
Nobody seems to think there's a market for low power desktop boards,
but the growing mini-itx market is proving otherwise.

Alvin Goats writes:
> Disable all "green" and apm
> modes on the laptop so you can run it with the lid closed (most laptops
> have a switch that senses when the lid is closed and automatically pust

Caution: some laptops may overheat if you run them with the lid closed.
Keep an eye on it at first.

illini.engineer at att.net writes:
> there's another possibility to consider and that is a PC with the mini-ITX motherboards
> manufactured by VIA, the motherboard manufacturer

That's the route we took.  Here's our server:
http://timocharis.com/doodles/server/index.html

Actually, we've since moved it to the other side of the wall, out in the
garage (need to take a new picture) because the fan was annoying (the
600 MHz is fanless but the 800 MHz has a fan).  I think there's
supposed to be a new mini itx fanless board with dual 600s, though,
which would make a dandy silent server ... we may upgrade.

IIRC, we didn't get the fanless single 600 board because it had only
one RAM slot, even aside from CPU speed questions.

	...Akkana


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