At Sun, 20 May 2012 17:28:57 -0400, "James K. Lowden"
<jklowden%schemamania.org@localhost> wrote:
Subject: sbc better than soekris?
>
> I could use some advice on replacing/fixing my router.
>
> I have a Soekris 4801 with an aging 2.5" 30 GB ATA drive that is
> starting to worry me:
I'd suggest updating to a newer Soekris 5501 model, but unfortunately
they're still rather expensive.
There are versions of PC Engines ALIX boards which are substantially
similar to the newer Soekris 5501 and they are sometimes available on
E-bay for more reasonable prices. I don't think they are quite as nice
though, but functionally they do much the same job (you only get two, or
three, Ethernet ports on the most common models though).
You may find something decent in the SBC SoC-based ARM or MIPS world
that works well with NetBSD, but finding such devices with multiple
proper separate Ethernet ports is difficult. Many now have wonky
special switch chips, and work is just now being done to get FreeBSD
drivers for them (and hopefully they can be pulled into NetBSD soon).
I ended up buying a fully kitted out Soekris 5501-70 for myself.
As for storage for such devices, well that's yet another good question.
I picked up a 16GB Compact FASH card for my Soekris machine at a
somewhat lower price from Best Buy than Soekris wanted for something
similar, but Compact FLASH seems to be getting a lot harder to find in
retail outlets, even in many camera stores I've been in recently. I
wish it would boot off a USB thumb drive, but it won't, yet.
I also bought what seemed to be the best price/GB SATA drive for it too,
and that ended up being a 320GB drive. I'm planning on putting my local
FTP cache there, but that will hardly make a dent in it, so I'll
probably also put some tertiary copies of backups on it too.
--
Greg A. Woods
Planix, Inc.
<woods%planix.com@localhost> +1 250 762-7675 http://www.planix.com/
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