I acquired one of these boards a few months ago along with the chassis
and power supply (that all neatly fit together). I got the 300MHz model
with the dual Intel ethernet controllers, 128MB of RAM and I fitted a
2.5" laptop hard drive in it (it fits pretty good in the chassis
that the board is in). 

Aside from the whole thing running me about USD$550, it runs NetBSD like
a champ. I use it for portable storage between the office and my home.
With it running NFS and Samba, I can connect to it with my Linux, BSD,
Solaris and NT boxes. 

The performance is pretty good and someone would have to pry it from
my cold dead fingers to get it away from me.

Check the board out here:
http://www.advantech.com/products/PCM-5823.asp

Cheers,
Jim DeLisle


Swell Software, Inc.
jdelisle@swellsoftware.com


"Perry E. Metzger" wrote:
> 
> The Plat'Home "Open Blocks" boxes are very nice. They are PowerPC
> based, run NetBSD, have two ethernets and an IDE controller. They fit
> in boxes that sit on the palm of your hand. The one problem: I do not
> think they sell them outside of Japan.
> 
> Wes Peters <wes@dobox.com> writes:
> > Erard Sébastien wrote:
> > > I'm looking for a embedded board suitable to run NetBSD.
> > > The main thing I want is two ethernet interfaces (10/100)
> > > and an harddrive controler (IDE or SCSI). The CPU doesn't
> > > matter (i386, arm, mips, sh...) but should be powerfull
> > > enough to do some network routing or file serving (only
> > > one at a time). I've found a few industrial products, but
> > > they seem quite expensive, at least for an individual.
> > >
> > > Does any one has an idea of a suitable board?
> > >
> > > Thanks in advance for any answer.
> >
> > Sorry to slip in so late on this discussion.  You might want to look at
> > the Soekris Engineering board/box; it should run NetBSD with no problems.
> > It is known to run OpenBSD and FreeBSD.  ;^)  It is a 133 Mhz "5x86"
> > design with 3x Intel EtherExpress Pro, a CF slot, a Mini-PCI slot, and a
> > 3.3v half-length PCI slot.  The prices are fairly good for embedded
> > stuff, too.
> >
> > http://www.soekris.com/
> >
> > If you want a real hard drive, you'll have to figure out how to turn the
> > CF slot back into an IDE bus.  That'll be fun.
> 
> --
> Perry E. Metzger                perry@piermont.com
> --
> "Ask not what your country can force other people to do for you..."