> Finally, if we're going to use hardware like this then I'd prefer to > design it locally and then have it build in our own local community. I > spent half an hour on the phone to a major manufacture of such equipment > earlier in the week. The guys was really helpful!
I beg to differ- you cannot compete with COTS (Common Off-the-shelf) components. If you had to design this stuff then you're over a year away from deployment, plus the $$$ in R&D with no guarantee that it will work. IMHO the best solution is to adapt something that already exists. The Soekris boards are not super-cheap, probably due to the limited volume they sell. But, they exist and they work. You could use mini-ITX boards, or (one day) nano-ITX. Even a hacked Linksys router might do you. You could certainly bring in parts and assemble them in the local community, but you'd have to be pretty committed to design, build, distribute and support your own hardware. > > Your thinking is like Microsoft Visual Basic - instant visible results > > that skip the (rather important) analysis phase. > > Steve as I've spent 10 years as a Microsoft Visual Basic programmer from > version 1 to version 6, I'm sure my approach won't take you by any > supprise. Indeed. By the way Don, your reply address on this email was set to somewhere other than the list. Might want to check your settings. A
