On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 09:48 -0400, Jim Van Meggelen wrote:
> I am looking to provision a small pc for use as a web console (for FOP,
> let's say). An Apple mini-MAC would be aboout the right size, but really too
> expensive. A mini-ITX board might do, but there are so many of them now and
> the VIA boards seem to have a reputation for poor quality.
I've got about 20 of them out there as diskless terminals and firewalls,
some 2 years old. None have given me problems. I've stuck with the epia
5000 version, no CPU fam and fast enough for what I need it for. I'm
about to put one in my home as a firewall and asterisk system.
> Features needed:
> - silent (solid state components or ultra quiet fans/drives)
> - ability to handle a CF card as a boot drive (if an adaptor card is needed
> that's OK)
> - small footprint, and preferably styled conservatively
> - possibility to add full softphone capability later (although this would be
> something to do for the second version, console 1.0 should be a basic PC to
> start - adding speech paths will vastly increase the development effort).
> - anything else I have missed?
> - unit has to be new (i.e. no used Dells from a liquidator), and have a
> reasonably reliable supply chain
I've been buying my VIA EPIA boards from thelinuxstore.ca. I think all
in they're about $300 without disk.
> Also, what OS to run? The console will only need to run a browser app, and
> perhaps an email client. A nice lightweight Linux might do, but is there
> such a thing as lightweight X? (that looks good and runs Firefox).
You can run one of these diskless (www.ltsp.org) if you have a suitable
Linux server to run sessions on. Pick a lightweight X window manager and
simply run Firefox in a loop (in case the user quits.) This way there
are no extraneous options for the operator to choose and the hardware
has no moving parts. Since the setup is stored on your main system you
can add or replace consoles easily.
> If we can put our heads together and think this one through it'd benefit any
> of us who do enterprise work, because sooner or later you can be sure you're
> going to be asked to provision a pc to be dedicated as a console, and a
> huge, noisy PC is not going to be popular.
>
> It'd be cool to wiki the results as well, since this would benefit the
> community at large.
--
John Van Ostrand
Net Direct Inc.
Chief Technology Officer
564 Weber St. N. Unit 12
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