Re: small form factor recommendations
On Sat, Jan 06, 2007 at 11:38:35AM -0800, Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
> > I have been using the A4F machines which are also mini-ITX based
> > computers:
> > http://www.mappit.de/a4fsite_englisch/
> > Plus points were that they were available in a solid state configuration
> > (no flash, fans or other moving parts) and could be bought without Windows
> > pre-installed.
Of course what I meant to say there was 'no HDD, fans or other moving
parts'...
> > However for a really small formfactor and low price, I have recently
> > been experimenting with the sumo thin client:
> > http://wmltd.co.uk/index.php/products/nomachine_thin_client
> > which has a AMD Geode GX533 or LX800 Processor. I am using the 1GB
> > flash version with 100GB USB disk, but can be fitted with internal
> > HDD. It has 4 USB ports and comes with Linux (Foundry) pre-installed
> > as an embedded system for thin client use (xterm etc). I did a Debian
> > install on the USB drive without a problem.
> >
> > If you really want very small formfactor, silent operation and low power,
> > they seem very good. But probably not ideal for demanding applications
> > like video compression.
> >
>
> A couple more good options, thanks. I've been doing some load testing
> using motion and a simple, cheap usb webcam. It seems pretty
> minimal. I can barely see the cpu monitor on my panel flicker when it
> fires up. I haven't checked it with tops yet, but it seems
> promising. I think I can probably run 4-5 of these off one little
> mini-itx box with ease. I probably won't even bother with the hard
> rive and just use nfs shares on another machine to store the video.
>
> for those interested, I found a nice little bit of mini=itx stuff at
> www.damnsmalllinux.org/store
>
> the prices aren't the best, but it does support a debian based
> project...
If you don't need a hard drive or heavy processing power, then
the minimal sumo would probably be ideal - with GX processor,
128Mb Ram and 64MB flash and Linux pre-installed is only
GBP 179.00 here.
My LX procesor currently shows up as follows:
root@foundrylinux# uname -a
Linux esfclient 2.6.11-geode-02.03.0100-wml-wmllx #30 Mon Nov 27 14:11:07 Local time zone must be set--see zic man i586 unknown
root@foundrylinux# free
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 246260 101408 144852 0 11128
Swap: 0 0 0
Total: 246260 101408 144852
root@foundrylinux# df
Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2 89216 89216 0 100% /
tmpfs 66560 232 66328 0% /tmp
/dev/hda3 853240 1692 808204 0% /etc/persistent
The root filesystem as supplied on the flash is squashfs so always
shows full.
It certainly saves a lot of space on my desktop.
Regards,
DigbyT
--
Digby R. S. Tarvin digbyt(at)digbyt.com
http://www.digbyt.com
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