25 Nov
2003
25 Nov
'03
9:57 a.m.
On Tue, 25 Nov 2003, Hans Franke wrote:
Most of the stuff can done with a single 300 MHz
Pentium class PC.
Right now, I'd almost suggest buying a new PC. THere's an incredible
cute new board from VIA (*1), see
http://www.viavpsd.com/product/epia_MII_spec.jsp?motherboardId=202
or with even two LAN ports:
http://www.viavpsd.com/product/epia_cl_spec.jsp?motherboardId=181
Hans, why would you suggest he buy something new for this application when
you know full well there are plenty of old PCs out there that will do the
job just fine and will cost nothing. A Pentium-90 system with 64MB RAM
would be overkill for even this, and those are as common as dirt.
The speed is good (As long as you don't want to
play 3D Games), size
is extrem compact, and due the single voltage power supply (MII)
extrem simple to use in your own specialized 'appliance' Except
Memoryy, everything is already on board, an the price is quite
acceptable.
You can find a real small Pentium board with the same specs. In fact,
Pentium SBCs (single board computers) are real easy to get also. I have a
stack of them.
a full figured system. If, only if your technical
experience is a
little bit above DAU (is that true for you?), Debian might be a good
choice. you need some basic unix knowledge for setup, but on the long
run its update mechanics are superiour.
Which is unfortunate because in my opinion Debian just sucks otherwise. I
prefer SuSE also.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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