[olug] Soekris single board computers

[Neal Rauhauser]

 I've been using Soekris Net 4511 single board computers for a while. 
They've got a 486/100, 64 meg of ram, a compact flash slot, and a PCMCIA 
slot in addition to their two onboard 10/100 ethernet ports. I've mostly 
had OpenBSD 3.4 on them but I'm about to convert a couple to the 
MikroTik Linux distribution.

 I've been using some old Unisys Pentium 100 bookshelf machines running 
FreeBSD for network analysis. They're loud, they're slow, they're small, 
but not as small as the Soekris net 4801. I just brought in four of the 
4801s for a network monitoring project. They come with a 266 MHz Geode 
processor, 128 meg of ram onboard, three ethernet ports, and a miniPCI 
slot. I'm populating the miniPCI slot on some of them with a Soekris 
VPN1411 crypto accelerator and I'm using Hitachi 2.0 gig microdrives for 
storage ($79 after rebate from CompUSA!). They'll get FreeBSD via 
network install and I managed to load the project finances such that one 
of these little guys will be staying here on my desk to keep me company.

 The 4801s are only about $360 by the time you get a microdrive in them 
and they're dead silent. If you feel the need for a wireless component 
they do make a case that is predrilled for RP-TNC and you can get 
miniPCI wireless cards. I took a few pictures for your viewing pleasure:

http://flickr.com/photos/avyakata/sets/1074986/