Subterranean
October 28th, 2008, 05:24 PM
Hi all, I hope this is the right place to discuss this sort of thing.
I was looking to make a tiny, low powered computer to act as a firewall/download box/light file server etc. that can be left on all the time and not waste too much money. I have seen a very nice pico-itx sized single board computer with an Atom processor and intels controller hub, so it would be low powered, but it only comes with a single ethernet port, which would make acting as a firewall more difficult.
When thinking about how I would solve this I thought about the computer on module (COMs) you can get that have the whole computer on them, but require a carrier board for the connections such as this one from Lippert (http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS8088872380.html)
Has anyone had any experience building one of these carrier boards? Am I a bit ahead of myself and should stick to the single board computers that are all put together for you? If not and I did want to get a few of these COMs and carrier boards together for me and a few friends or so, will I have to get the manufacturer of the COM to make the carrier board or could it be sourced externally? Is it going to cost a lot as I would just be looking for a small batch?
Any other advice or thoughts are welcomed.
Thanks.
I was looking to make a tiny, low powered computer to act as a firewall/download box/light file server etc. that can be left on all the time and not waste too much money. I have seen a very nice pico-itx sized single board computer with an Atom processor and intels controller hub, so it would be low powered, but it only comes with a single ethernet port, which would make acting as a firewall more difficult.
When thinking about how I would solve this I thought about the computer on module (COMs) you can get that have the whole computer on them, but require a carrier board for the connections such as this one from Lippert (http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS8088872380.html)
Has anyone had any experience building one of these carrier boards? Am I a bit ahead of myself and should stick to the single board computers that are all put together for you? If not and I did want to get a few of these COMs and carrier boards together for me and a few friends or so, will I have to get the manufacturer of the COM to make the carrier board or could it be sourced externally? Is it going to cost a lot as I would just be looking for a small batch?
Any other advice or thoughts are welcomed.
Thanks.