On Mon, 2010-05-24 at 20:39 +0100, Stroller wrote: > On 24 May 2010, at 14:11, James wrote: > > ... Beware, it often becomes a life long > > passion to the point of an addition. > > This is exactly what I fear of using such specialist hardware! Far > better to burn a few watts, than to have to learn such intricacies!
We buy about 5 - 10 of these (started on the net4801, now the net5501) per year at work: http://www.yawarra.com.au/hw-net5501.php And make them do various things ranging in intensity from data servers to gateway/firewall/routers and so on. We've used IDE and flash in them, usually IDE for the convenience. We compile for x86. The 4 network ports are nice, and there's some GPIO to boot. They offer a range of free distributions for various purposes: http://www.yawarra.com.au/ti-software.php#free some are just links to the projects, some are pre-built for the device. Would be good to get you started before you've customised it the way you like. That's an Australian company, but the boards come from http://www.soekris.com/ so you may be able to order from them and build / buy your own case. hth, -- Iain Buchanan <iaindb at netspace dot net dot au> Lucas' Law: Good will always win, because evil hires the _stupid_ engineers.
