Just wanted to share my find with everyone.
Highlighted Features:
Dual Core Atom 1.8 Ghz D525 Supports 64bit, NX, and hyperthreading
1 PCI
1 Mini PICE
Dual Gigabit Ethernet - Realtek
External Serial and Parallel
5 Internal comports, COM2 can be 422 or 485
Watchdog Timer
Being Atom it won't support ECC. And VT-x aka hardware visualization is a no go. I'm sure you wouldn't get full gigabit throughput though but I'm sure it's still pretty good.
The Watchdog Timer probably isn't supported yet by Freebsd yet but I'm sure I could write the drivers. And I'm not sure about the quality of the re network drivers. But it does have a pci slot so I can always throw in a dual intel nic pci card in there.
With dual nics it's an obvious firewall box, nameserver, printserver, and network syslog device. And it should have plenty enough horsepower for encrypted networking and a jailed web server.
But what I find interesting is the hardware watchdog, serial and the RS485 ports. For those that don't know: RS485 is a low speed serial bus. You daisy chain devices. Think Appletalk, SCSI, and old coaxial Ethernet.
Very useful for a project I'm planning on doing. I have an old power control console that crt monitors use to sit on. The kind with lighted switches and a master power switch. A ton of empty space inside. My plan is to replace all the switches with a LCD display panel and soft switches and put an AVR 8 bit embedded chip inside to control the power ports. Not only can I control power from the panel switches but I can also hook up the AVR via RS485 connected by an couple RJ11 ports. I could do the same thing with a few power strips. Call it $20 to mod a power strip. Quite cheap. Or I could add wireless or electrical line transmission for more money. But I would need to control all such devices from a single computer which is where I think this motherboard would be perfect.
What this gets me is a home automation center. I can power cycle or control any device: computer, network switch or lamp. This motherboard has a watchdog timer of it own which means if it gets sluggish or stalls it automatically reboots. This computer could monitor other computers over the network and powercycle them automatically or manually over an ssh connection. It could also likely handle monitoring and recording a few web cams for an extra bonus and not even reach 50 percent capacity.
Per site I not only get a firewall/access box which I would need to install anyways per site but I can also get automation and some security monitoring on the cheap.
And lastly it just occurred to me I could also use this for for realtime voice recognition and command and control.
Highlighted Features:
Dual Core Atom 1.8 Ghz D525 Supports 64bit, NX, and hyperthreading
1 PCI
1 Mini PICE
Dual Gigabit Ethernet - Realtek
External Serial and Parallel
5 Internal comports, COM2 can be 422 or 485
Watchdog Timer
Being Atom it won't support ECC. And VT-x aka hardware visualization is a no go. I'm sure you wouldn't get full gigabit throughput though but I'm sure it's still pretty good.
The Watchdog Timer probably isn't supported yet by Freebsd yet but I'm sure I could write the drivers. And I'm not sure about the quality of the re network drivers. But it does have a pci slot so I can always throw in a dual intel nic pci card in there.
With dual nics it's an obvious firewall box, nameserver, printserver, and network syslog device. And it should have plenty enough horsepower for encrypted networking and a jailed web server.
But what I find interesting is the hardware watchdog, serial and the RS485 ports. For those that don't know: RS485 is a low speed serial bus. You daisy chain devices. Think Appletalk, SCSI, and old coaxial Ethernet.
Very useful for a project I'm planning on doing. I have an old power control console that crt monitors use to sit on. The kind with lighted switches and a master power switch. A ton of empty space inside. My plan is to replace all the switches with a LCD display panel and soft switches and put an AVR 8 bit embedded chip inside to control the power ports. Not only can I control power from the panel switches but I can also hook up the AVR via RS485 connected by an couple RJ11 ports. I could do the same thing with a few power strips. Call it $20 to mod a power strip. Quite cheap. Or I could add wireless or electrical line transmission for more money. But I would need to control all such devices from a single computer which is where I think this motherboard would be perfect.
What this gets me is a home automation center. I can power cycle or control any device: computer, network switch or lamp. This motherboard has a watchdog timer of it own which means if it gets sluggish or stalls it automatically reboots. This computer could monitor other computers over the network and powercycle them automatically or manually over an ssh connection. It could also likely handle monitoring and recording a few web cams for an extra bonus and not even reach 50 percent capacity.
Per site I not only get a firewall/access box which I would need to install anyways per site but I can also get automation and some security monitoring on the cheap.
And lastly it just occurred to me I could also use this for for realtime voice recognition and command and control.