---- Original message ---- >Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 07:24:50 -0800 >From: Sean Comeau <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Subject: Re: I have $300 >To: Bob Ababurko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Cc: OpenBSD Misc <misc@openbsd.org> > >On Mon, Nov 28, 2005 at 01:17:05PM -0800, Sean Comeau wrote: >> try these: >> >> http://www.commell-sys.com/News/COMMELL_20040610_EMB564.htm >> >> Buy two of them. They cost about $300 a piece. The 256MB of ram and 4 NICs >> they have onboard is sufficient. The 512MB CF disks are $80 each. $800 for >> a fully fault tolerent firewall setup is about as cheap as you're going to > >Oops sorry, these are actually more like $800 each. I got mine second hand >and didn't realize the real price. Anyway, they are STILL cool and even >2 grand for a fully fault tolerant firewall with such a tiny footprint and >no moving parts is very reasonable. >
i wanted to build a couple small machines on the cheap a few months ago, so i went to http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl/sc.8/category.99/.f and got a couple VIA EPIA 5000 boards, bought the cases i used elsewhere, and plugged a 2-port NIC into the pci slot on board. the cases came with a riser card, making for a real easy setup. i find working with CF cards to be irritating, so i installed IDE drives in these machines. i think that a quad-port NIC would fit in these, but i just didn't need 5 ethernet ports on it. my total cost of assembly per machine was about 300 USD after shipping and all that. it ends up costing about the same as a soekris and is significanly easier to administrate, faster, has more memory (256MB) and is somewhat modular. /jake
