Many helpful replies so quickly, thank you. It looks like I should plan to spend more and stick with x86 if it's so much better supported. The mention of Mini-Box rang a bell as I used to have an M200 that worked well. I try to avoid diversity in both hardware and software so, if I'm spending a bit more anyway, perhaps I should even look out for a system whose sibling could replace, for instance, the computer I use for streaming TV. My fileserver needs would be modest -- I'm asking little in terms of number of clients, reliability, size, throughput, etc. -- I am just looking to add enough value to justify spending more on a 'router', even to the level of Intel NUCs which look pretty good if their hardware is solid.
As background, this OpenBSD effort is also partly about replacing the various hardware I already have: nearly ten-year-old desktop machines that are on their last legs (replacing parts by cannibalization or buying used on eBay) and are enormous, noisy, and power-hungry. (My current router is a full-height tower, a server retired from a past employer, with one of the first single-core Opterons and the 2.5" drive from its mini-ITX predecessor which died!) I figure if I'm reinstalling stuff onto new hardware, it's a good time to try out OpenBSD too: if nothing else, it makes me actually review configurations instead of just copying them over. -- Mark
