OpenBSD Journal

Ask Undeadly: Low power systems for OpenBSD?

Contributed by mk/reverse on from the power saving dept.

Chas writes:

What systems can run OpenBSD that have very slight (under 30W) power requirements?

I have a couple of 486-era Compaq Contura laptops that I am using as gateways and the power supplies indicate that their maximum draw is 27W. Most pentium-class laptops have double the power requirements.

I want a fully assembled system with a hard drive. Should I consider Soekris, or is there a VIA Centaur or Transmeta Crusoe that would give me more CPU performance for equivalent power (and reasonable cost)?

Since most OpenBSD machines run for long periods of time it might be a good idea to lower the power consumption where possible. Which machines give the most bang for the buck without making the Sun redundant?

(Comments are closed)


Comments
  1. By Anonymous Coward (142.166.108.150) on

    Might want to look at a VIA C3 based system. The CPU at least is low-power (~11 watts or less I think -- I'm not sure about the availability of a equally frugal MoBo though), and has nifty hardware crypto support as a bonus!

    Comments
    1. By RC (4.16.255.200) on

      Screw VIA. Their C3 processors are low power, but slow as hell too. You're better off getting a processor from Intel/AMD from a few years back. Better performance, and nearly the same power requirements.

      Comments
      1. By Anonymous Coward (203.202.110.39) on

        Sorry dude, VIA is the best option. For starters you get the high speed RNG, which'll help with encryption, but you also have a much more modern bus and system architecture. DDR RAM, small form factor, PCI card, USB, Firewire... That won't happen with an old crappy PPro or P2.

        Comments
        1. By Brad (67.71.96.144) brad at comstyle dot com on

          As well as AES and SHA1/SHA256 and with the Esther core (2GHz) RSA ops too.

        2. By RC (4.16.255.61) on

          high speed RNG: Spend $100 and buy a full-fledged crypto-card, which does far more.

          DDR RAM: isn't going to have much effect on performance.

          PCI card: Are you actually saying that a PII won't have PCI card slots? HAH!

          USB: Hell, that's been around forever. I've got a 100MHz Pentium with USB ports.

          Firewire: It would be trivial to go out and buy a PCI firewire card if you actually need it.

          The question is, are these trivial features worth the several hundred dollar premium of getting a new C3, rather than grabing a free PII

          Comments
          1. By Anonymous Coward (61.95.66.134) on

            The VIA's crypto instructions outperform the PCI cards by an order of magnitude.

            Comments
            1. By ViPER (213.84.93.41) viper@dmrt.net on http://www.dmrt.net

              Are you saying/meaning they outperform PCI crypto accelerator cards ?
              (Meaning the basic cards costing around $175)

              Comments
              1. By djm@ (61.95.66.134) on

                Yes - becuase the VIA chips implement the instructions in the CPU there is little overhead to using them. For the PCI cards, all transactions must go via the bus and userspace users of the cards facilities face the extra cost of a context switch.

          2. By mike (217.162.138.166) on

            yes, if you're doing something more with it than playing in your basement.

            the problem with reusing old pc's is noise, size, time spent debugging and erm... age. meaning it can run for three years more or crash the next day. granted the same is potentially true of any hardware, but still...

            I much prefer to build things which have a possiblity of lasting, the C3 is very nice for that, I've had no problems running one as a file-server 24/7 for about three months now.

            The pcengines WRAP boards are also very recommendable, no problems either .

            Comments
            1. By RC (4.16.254.91) on

              I've got absolutely no idea what your point is.

              <i>noise</i>
              If you spend maybe $10 and replace the fans, you'll get a system quieter than anything on the market.

              <i>time spent debugging</i>
              What is there to debug? Motherboard, Power Supply, CPU, RAM. Check.

              <i>it can run for three years more or crash the next day. granted the same is potentially true of any hardware, but still...</i>
              So you just canceled out your point here, entirely...

              In any case, I disagree. I have never yet had an old motherboard just up and die one day. I HAVE had that happen with brand-new ones, I'm afraid. Anyhow, age doesn't seem to have anything to do with failures.

              <i>I've had no problems running one as a file-server 24/7 for about three months now.</i>
              And I've had no problems running my old Pentium Pro system as a router/firewall/comserver 24/7 for about 2 years now.

              Comments
              1. By Anonymous Coward (69.197.92.181) on

                A new fan is still louder than no fans. And there is plenty to debug. Gee, it seems to randomly reboot itself, now I get to play "guess which hardware's bad" to try to fix this. If you are seriously stupid enough to think an old piece of shit p2 is as good as a new via machine, then go use one and stfu. You don't need to try to convince everyone else to be retarded too.

                Comments
                1. By RC (4.16.254.91) on

                  > A new fan is still louder than no fans.

                  Most VIA processors can't run fanless. Besides, the hard drive you will be using would be louder than a couple good thermo-control (Enermax) fans.

                  > Gee, it seems to randomly reboot itself, now I get to play "guess which hardware's bad" to try to fix this.

                  That's the most ridiculous thing I've heard in a long time. As if Intel systems are complete junk, and VIA has the highest quality standards :-)

                  Comments
                  1. By Anonymous Coward (69.197.92.181) on

                    No, its not as if intel is junk, its that its old and gone through who knows what. A battered old piece of junk will not be as stable as a brand new machine. I've never seen any difference in stability with intel vs amd vs via except with certain known problems, like the i810 I think it was?

                    Comments
                    1. By RC (4.16.255.122) on

                      > A battered old piece of junk will not be
                      > as stable as a brand new machine.

                      Sure it will. We aren't talking about car engines. We are talking about solid-state electronics here. CPU/Mobo/RAM can run 24/7 for several decades on-end before they begin to deteriorate, and we aren't talking about stuff that is 20+ years old.

                      Of course, you occasionally find motherboard/cpu/ram that is marginal, but they are rare, and it's always because of an original defect gradually getting worse.

                      In other words, a brand-new system is FAR more likely to develop a problem after, say, 6-months of constant use, than is a 4-year old system, which has already been under heavy use. Take it from me, I've built several hundred systems myself, and I'm used many, many older systems. Without fail, the hundred 200MHz systems I've... inherited... continue to work without fail for years to come, while out of a batch of 100 brand-new Asus motherboards, an average of about 4 will have a problem in the first month of operation.

                      Comments
                      1. By Anonymous Coward (69.197.92.181) on

                        Well, clearly your experience is right, and everyone else's is wrong then. I am sure you're A+ certified and everything, but seriously dude, you aren't the only person to have used computers before. I have had tons of old machines get random problems, or just plain die. Situations like:
                        "what's that burning smell?"
                        "Oh, that's just your firewall."
                        "Is it supposed to do that?"
                        "Nope, I'll go get you a new one."

                        Power supplies blow, motherboards die, sometimes with horrible "capacitor blew up" smells. And just the thermal wear on traces from getting hot and then cold a bazillion times over the years eventually leads to them dieing.

                        And RAM that goes bad after 6 months is usually caused by static discharge, as it seems damn near nobody can be bothered to handle sensitive parts like RAM properly anymore.

                        Comments
                        1. By RC (4.16.255.122) on

                          > Well, clearly your experience is right,
                          > and everyone else's is wrong then.

                          I didn't say that. However, I do have experience with hundreds upon hundreds of systems, so I'd say my experience is much more accurate than people who have owned/operated less than a dozen systems their entire life, and are drawing conclusions based on that.

                          > Power supplies blow,

                          Yes, I've already said, PSes are the one thing that might die and need to be replaced. But at $20 a shot, it's not a big issue to swap it out.

                          > motherboards die, sometimes with horrible "capacitor blew up" smells.

                          If a capacitor blows, it's probably because you had a short in your PS and the capacitor is just the first thing to go when the mobo is overloaded.

                          As I've said, I've had motherboards die, but when they're new. When they've been up and running for years, the odds they'll go are much more slim.

                          > And just the thermal wear on traces from getting hot and then
                          > cold a bazillion times over the years eventually leads to them dieing.

                          How does a trace "die" exactly?

                          > And RAM that goes bad after 6 months is usually caused by static discharge

                          Well then, RAM manufacturers must handle their RAM like crap before they ship it out... I'd put my money on chip (manufacturing) defects as the causes.

                          Comments
                          1. By Anonymous Coward (69.197.92.181) on

                            I'll let you in on a little secret. You don't buy your RAM from manufacturers. You buy it from a middle man, who likely bought it from another middle man. They do not handle RAM properly, and often static discharge will damage a chip, but it won't be noticable for a couple months.

                            And like I said, your arrogance in assuming your the only person who has ever used computers is astounding. Out of 600 brand new mobos, I had 3 die. Of all the old pentium and pentium 2 machines already in place, a good quarter of them ended up dying and needing replaced.

                            And as to traces dying, look up thermal stress. Metal expands and contracts when heated and cooled. Do it enough time and fragile little traces will crack, and then if running, they will make a cracking sound, and you will smell a horrible burning smell, and there will be a nice black splotch on the board where the trace went. Then you replace the motherboard. You've seriously had hundreds of old machines and never once seen this?

                    2. By Anonymous Coward (209.99.76.164) on

                      um i picked up a ppro 200 off ebay...slapped 3 nics in it...installed openbsd...that thing has been running for > 3 years now. The hd in the thing did go bad once...but so did a hd in my workstation. The only win I see to your arguements is using CF and having a diskless system. (Which I would love to do but don't have the time/money presently.)

              2. By Anonymous Coward (64.110.219.8) on

                For me it was as simple as not wanting another noisy tower hulking around. C3s and Soekris' fit in tiny boxes, and can be entirely fan-free. To me, a couple extra $$ for that was well worth it. Old PCs are ok if you are on a really tight budget, but I prefer to spend a little more and get exactly what I want.

        3. By ViPER (213.84.93.41) viper@dmrt.net on http://www.dmrt.net

          My friend, the Pentium Pro 200Mhz with 1mb integrated level 2 cache ain't crappy at all.
          It is 8way smp ready, and it uses RISC-like microinstructions.
          Please do not mention the PPro with any other intel CPU in one breath.

          (My mobo holding a Ppro 200 1mb jumped me)
          (from the closet and forced me to type this)

          Comments
          1. By Anonymous Coward (195.217.242.33) on

            "RISC-like microinstructions."

            a contradiction in terms

      2. By Nick Holland (68.43.115.33) nick@holland-consulting.net on http://www.openbsd.org/faq/

        To find an AMD chip that draws less power than a modern VIA, you have to go back to probably 486 class chips. They run hot. PII class systems DO draw a lot of power as well: if your desire is to have a cool running, low power system, PII's don't do it (look at the size of the heatsink!). And then there is their supporting circuitry...

        "Slow" is relative. For GENERAL use, a modern VIA vs. a Modern P4 or AMD, yeah, the VIA isn't going to win, but it is still faster than a four year old PII chip. The primary issue with the VIA chips where they come out as real slugs is in floating point math -- which isn't a big deal for a firewall. Mostly, a firewall is a data pump -- moving data from interface to interface, something the VIAs do just fine ('course, so do most processors). If you DO actually do something that needs processing, it is usually crypto, in which case, the crypto-enabled VIA chips just kick but. And not just PII butt. :)

        Now...is the COST of a new machine worth the energy savings compared to the "freeness" of a old machine? depends...

        Comments
        1. By RC (4.16.254.91) on

          To find an AMD chip that draws less power than a modern VIA, you have to go back to probably 486 class chips.
          You've been listening to VIA's propoganda too much if you believe that.

          Let's try some examples, shall we?

          C3-800A 13W
          PIII-500E 13.2W
          Cel-533A 11.2W

          Either of the Intel processors would not only use less power, but would VASTLY outperform the C3-800. In fact, a PII-333 would outperform a C3-800. I am the not-so-proud owner of a C3-800.

          Also, I was talking about underclocking an older Pentium, not just running it at normal-speed. With the poor performance of C3s, an old, underclocked pentium will still well outperform it.

          it is still faster than a four year old PII chip.
          No it isn't. Not by a long shot. C3s perform like Intel/AMD equivalents at less than half the MHz.

          The primary issue with the VIA chips where they come out as real slugs is in floating point math
          Not true. They are very slow on absolutely everything.

          If you DO actually do something that needs processing, it is usually crypto,
          No. Print queues, compression, proxy, PPPoE. And that's just a very quick list from memory. Your SSH sessions aren't guaranteed to be fast, because you still need to load up the CPU if you want compression. And encryption will be slow when you need a cipher not built-in, like Blowfish.

          Now...is the COST of a new machine worth the energy savings compared to the "freeness" of a old machine?
          As I've shown, you don't get any energy savings... Just performance losses, and the high extra cost.

          Comments
          1. By Anonymous Coward (69.197.92.181) on

            "You've been listening to VIA's propoganda too much if you believe that.

            Let's try some examples, shall we?

            C3-800A 13W
            PIII-500E 13.2W
            Cel-533A 11.2W"

            Are you on drugs? Sure the comparison looks good for old pentium chips if you make up power consumption numbers for them. Go look up the real values. A p2 300 is 41W. A 750MHz Atlon is 43W. Do you seriously expect us to believe that for a brief period in between those 2 times they had cut power consumption so dramatically?

            "Either of the Intel processors would not only use less power, but would VASTLY outperform the C3-800. In fact, a PII-333 would outperform a C3-800. I am the not-so-proud owner of a C3-800."

            Do some benchmarks instead of making shit up. Or just go lookup existing ones, google works pretty good. The Via chips are slower than modern chips, but they outperform all p2 era chips, dramatically in integer, barely in floating point.

            Comments
            1. By RC (4.16.254.91) on

              > Sure the comparison looks good for old pentium chips if you make up
              > power consumption numbers for them. Go look up the real values

              Instead of looking up a completely different processor, why didn't you look up the ones I specified? Not like I was vague about it, I listed exact numbers.

              Source for Intel Power Specs: http://users.erols.com/chare/elec.htm

              Comments
              1. By Anonymous Coward (69.197.92.181) on

                Wow, that's a super list. I can make a webpage with incorrect info on it too, does that make it right? Perhaps if I add a wikipedia entry on "RC" saying that he is wrong, you'll realize you are wrong? I mean, its on a website right?

                Comments
                1. By RC (4.16.255.122) on

                  Claiming it must be wrong is not going to get you anywhere. At the bottom of the page they even list the sources where they gathered their information. Follow the link, download the PDFs from Intel.com, and look-up the specs. Unless, of course, you're convinced Intel is lying too.

                  Saying that some older chips happened to use more power is not evidence of anything.

                  If you actually find a source of info that is in conflict with what I listed, start pointing out exact URLs, so nobody has to just take your word for it. Otherwise, I'm done with this thread.

                  Comments
                  1. By Anonymous Coward (69.197.92.181) on

                    I gave info on actual chips I have actually here. Lets assume your numbers are right, how many people have those chips? In my random old crap pile all the chips I have are over 30W. Just because you can luck out with a very select few low powered chips, doesn't mean "old chips are just as low power". How about looking at how many chips are in the 10-15W range vs how many are in the 30W range. Since so many more are higher powered chips, many more people are more likley to have them. Nice job trying to fit the facts to your argument instead of basing your argument on facts though.

                    Comments
                    1. By Cowonymous Ankward (213.173.183.18) on

                      read the subject: it clearly asks for SYSTEMS, not for chips, less CPUs alone. if whichever (peecee) CPU heats for say 20W, you can be shure that its surrounding voltage converters running around say 75% effeciency add 7W of heat, then its surrounding N-/S-briges -did I hear the also have a heatsink? a fan?- and RAM easily add up another 12W (evenly distributed across the whole mobo) (we leave out the power of a gfx board, we do serial console here) give dome 5W spare for onboard peripherals which may be there interim sum = 45W rounded the main PSU also works at nothing really better than say 75% effeciency total sum = 60W the figures above are invented, realworld figures are higher or what would be the point of having mean PSUs designed for 150-200W++ nominal power?

          2. By Anonymous Coward (129.65.46.212) on

            While possibly missleading by omission of some facts, the ones listed are basically true. From http://support.intel.com/support/processors/celeron/sb/CS-007436.htm The Celeron 533 ran at 11.9 Watts. But the context of this is that the Celeron 500 ran at 27.2 Watts and the chips after the 533 used steadily more power than the previous. Not counting the 600MHz version the whole line went right back up to about 18 Watts and then up from there.

    2. By Anonymous Coward (4.42.65.82) on

      I just got the VIA ME-600 from Fry's Electronics(California;outpost.com). I can't find a low power supply though so I am using a micro-atx PS. Anyone knows of a power supply or case with power supply for mini-itxt under $50? I googled and it seemed that most mini-itx cases are about 100 bucks. I could buy an atx w/ p/s for about $30 but this is not what I want in terms of size and usability. Thanks.

  2. By phessler (208.201.244.164) on

    My soekris maxes out at 15W. 4801 with a CF formfactor harddrive, and a vpn1401 pci card. Works excellently for my firewall.

    Comments
    1. By sthen (81.168.66.229) on

      Plugging a switchmode PSU powering a net4501 or net4801 into my power-guesser (no HD in this case), I rarely see more than 6-7W (there's very little difference in power consumption at idle CPU between the two, some of the 4801's features can be quite helpful, e.g. the USB port, and obviously the CPU is faster).

    2. By Michael Knudsen (217.157.199.114) on http://e.molioner.dk/

      If I remember correctly, 15W is the maximum possible power consumption on the 4801, all devices included.

    3. By Jedi/Sector One (212.129.63.1) j@pureftpd.org on http://00f.net

      I second this.

      My Soekris Net4801 works like a charm. It has low power requirements, it's totally silent and the three network interfaces are really handy.

      Comments
      1. By Christopher Hylarides (206.235.255.7) on

        The net4801 also have 2.5" laptop IDE hard drive mounts than you can buy for the onboard IDE. It also has compact flash AND a cardbus slot (and I think USB). It's the perfect firewall/wireless gateway box!

        Comments
        1. By bob (80.138.146.163) on

          the net4511 and net4521 has PC-Card/CardBus NOT the net4801 !
          see http://www.soekris.com/products.htm

          best bob

  3. By Anonymous Coward (66.239.167.98) on

    http://www.mini-box.com/m100.htm

  4. By Daniel Tams (83.73.138.99) on http://dantams.sdf-eu.org/

    A few weeks ago I bought a WRAP from PC Engines. It took no time to set it up as an ADSL router. It consumes only 3-5W and has worked flublessly so far.

    It can be used for many more common server purposes by attaching a Microdrive to the CF interface.

  5. By RC (4.16.255.200) on

    You really don't need an old 486 notebook. Look for modern notebooks. My 1.2GHz Mobile Celeron notebook was well under 30watts even with the fan at full-spin, CPU being maxed-out, and the LCD turned-on. Surely you want the LCD off, so you'll get even less power usage. If that's more expense than you want, you could pretty easily get an older 1GHz AMD Duron or similar chip, and underclock it a bit to get it down to your power requirements (underclocking bus freq works better than underclocking the multiplier). It helps quite a bit if you can get a motherboard that works well with fvcool. The KT133 chipset is the only one I've had luck with, and my system runs under 40watts most of the time (going up to about 60 when the CPU is maxed-out)...

  6. By Anthony (68.145.111.152) on

    "Maximum" probably means "while charging the battery".

    Even current (lower power) laptops don't do 27W just sitting there running.

  7. By unixbigot (61.8.101.245) on

    NatSemi Geode boards. Under 1W with CF, add 500mA for a 2.5" hdd.
    (These are a low-power pentium variant. OpenBSD runs fine.)

    Google for 'annso fgm-700'. Ignore the 19" description, the actual
    circuit board is about the dimensions of a hardback novel. You can
    buy these and similar boards in cases about the size of your average
    DSL modem.

    These boards generally come with 2-4 ethernet ports plus serial, and maybe vga. Some have onboard audio so you can play muzak while you firewall. ;-)

    Comments
    1. By unixbigot (61.8.101.225) on

      ...of course I meant 1 _Amp_, not Watt.

      The board I mentioned draws about 750mA from a 12v wallwart.

      Comments
      1. By knomevol (64.48.234.232) on

        googling produced one site for me: http://www.nj-huakong.com/china/output7_2.htm hopelessly (in my case) chinese, and no link to buy. know of any other sources?

        Comments
        1. By unixbigot (210.49.148.141) on

          The manufacturer used to have a site at annso.com.tw, but it appears
          to be down. $ORK[-2] purchased a handful of units from the
          manufacturer around 18 months ago, which is when I installed openbsd
          on one of them.

          Maybe they went bust. I recall there were plenty of sources for
          Geode boards, however. I've moved on from that position so don't have
          access to the details any more.

  8. By Anonymous Coward (80.138.110.154) on

    http://www.soekris.com

    Comments
    1. By djm@ (61.95.66.134) on

      Agree. My 4501s are low power, very reliable, completely silent and more than fast enough for my (fairly basic) needs.

  9. By isolde (83.64.199.199) on http:/

    http://www.lex.com.tw:8080/home.htm

    The site´s a bit flashheavy but they make great products. i just tested some "light" systems of theirs. cf, ide(2,5") optional wireless, adsl, 3 nics... and all for a reasonable price. based on via c3 without fans...

  10. By Anonymous Coward (195.217.242.33) on

    Slightly OT but, does anyone know where I can get a small, quiet Sparc based box ?

    I run a couple of SS20s at the moment among others, but they are big, bulky and noisy ( though the latter I am working on, ) I could do with using them as a small firewall/router

    Any ideas ?

    Comments
    1. By Anonymous Coward (64.40.45.158) on

      Comments
      1. By Anonymous Coward (195.217.242.33) on

        Yeah I saw that while I was searching, they are however very expensive and kind of like overkill for a firewall/router.

        Shame really

      2. By Brad (67.71.96.144) brad at comstyle dot com on

        That would be a sparc64-based laptop. Unknown how well that would run the sparc64 port and at almost $3k USD that is pretty damn expensive for what he would be using it for. You can pick up a SFF PC using a uATX or Mini-ITX motherboard and CPU for much cheaper. Other options include little embedded computers like a NexCom for example or a Soekris.

        Comments
        1. By Anonymous Coward (195.217.242.33) on

          I was trying to avoid x86 if possible, not to worry, I'll just try to get an SS20 to run quieter.

          Comments
          1. By Pete (192.25.22.11) on

            I've used an LX running openBSD since about version 2.6. It's about the half the size of a shoe box and works very nicely. You can get them on ebay for about £10.

            It taked mine about a week to do a make build though.

          2. By Nonesuch (24.148.72.216) on

            See if you can find a Ross "Sparcplug", a full-height 5.25 bay unit containing a SparcStation 20. Only supports has 10Mb ethernet, but will take SBus expansion cards.

            Original list price was $10,052. I used to find them on ebay for a few hundred bucks, but you don't see many people trading in old HyperSparc gear much these days.

            Lastly, if you want to move to Sparc64, there are a number of companies selling Ultra AXi motherboards, these are ATX form and can be deployed in any of the new "silent" ATX cases.

      3. By Anonymous Coward (66.92.34.80) on http://www.ebiinc.com

        OK, OK, OK, I'll admit it, a Sparc-based laptop is kinda cool, but a dual proc 64-bit UltraSparc based laptop?!
        Dual proc ultrasparc laptop

        Is someone there kidding around? Do they really make those things?

        I saw in the specs sheet they're ummmm over 20lbs. Not exactly a "notebook", but it's the first dual proc laptop I've ever heard of.

  11. By Graham (209.152.2.3) on

    I'm running OpenBSD 3.5 on a VIA EPIA M motherboard at my house. I had looked into Soekris previously but I could get more horsepower for cheaper with the VIA board. I have the C3 model that runs at 1GHz. I've tested it and under heavy load (compiling software + locate.updatedb) it only uses 32 watts @ 12VDC even with my WD 7200rpm drive. At idle it's just ~25 watts. It's actually one of the most stable servers I've had, I haven't had a single problem with it.

    I use it as a file/web server (PHP/MySQL/etc) but if it was just firewalling I'd definitely go for a Soekris with a CompactFlash card -- 100% solid state router.

    Comments
    1. By Anonymous Coward (24.46.36.183) on

      Where did you buy it?

    2. By Anonymous Coward (195.70.45.115) on

      How can one easily measure the power consumption of a system?

      Comments
      1. By Anonymous Coward (213.118.165.151) on

        In electronics-stores you can buy small power measuring devices that you can just plug into an outlet. Then plug whatever you want to measure into the device, and it'll tell you how much power it's using.

        Most of these devices can also count how much energy (kWh) the device used up, so you can measure the power consumption averaged over time (An idle machine uses less power than the same machine under heavy load).

        Some can even calculate the electricity bill you're going to get, including different tarifs for day and night ;-)

        Comments
        1. By Anonymous Coward (193.6.17.12) on

          thanks for your kind response! - it costs more than my 2 month electric bill ;)

  12. By Daowee (217.215.100.191) on

    EPIA -- fast, standard pci, needs ATX power supply.
    soekris -- 100Mbps throughput questionable? 5 volts operation! Tiny.

    the price is in the same ballpark, buy one of each and tell us about it.

  13. By Michael Dexter (213.175.79.146) on

    I am surprised the MikroTik RouterBoard (www.routerboard.com, mikrotik.com) is not getting more attention since they've been advertising in Linux Journal. It is based on GEODE like the Soekris and among the various interfaces like PCI and PCMCIA, it includes Power over EtherNet (PoE) so it can be sent up a pole with a WiFi antenna. Beware of 1.0 revs that were Linux-specific but they say they've bowed to pressure to support BSD's with newer ones.

  14. By Anonymous Coward (213.118.165.151) on

    Soekris looks nice, but a 4801 with USB2.0 would be even nicer, for high speed external devices.

  15. By Anonymous Coward (68.100.161.200) on

    Does anyone know when Soekris is planning to relaase their new
    net5801 and net7501 mainboards?

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Copyright © - Daniel Hartmeier. All rights reserved. Articles and comments are copyright their respective authors, submission implies license to publish on this web site. Contents of the archive prior to as well as images and HTML templates were copied from the fabulous original deadly.org with Jose's and Jim's kind permission. This journal runs as CGI with httpd(8) on OpenBSD, the source code is BSD licensed. undeadly \Un*dead"ly\, a. Not subject to death; immortal. [Obs.]