On Fri, Jul 12, 2013 at 01:00:41PM +1000, Trent W. Buck wrote:
I think there *is* a gap between the smallest thing you can reasonably run Debian on -- about 128MB nonvolatile / 128MB volatile -- and your typical OpenWRT target (4 to 16MB nonvolatile / 8 to 32MB volatile).
true, but the kind of machines people run DSL on (a P4 or better with at least 512MB or 1GB RAM) is a very different beast to an openwrt device. your comments, btw, are a large part of the reason why I give up disappointed every time I look into the idea of using an openwrt-capable device rather than a generic PC. they're very limited, and quite expensive for what you get (a PC to do the same job can be had for free). about the only thing I really want a *wrt device for is so I can have the ADSL line directly controlled by Linux (rather than bridging pppoe), but I can't find one with supported ADSL that isn't either tagged as experimental WIP, or comes with stuff I don't want/need (wifi/NAS/print-server), or doesn't have Gb ethernet. you can't brick a PC, either (although SecureBoot and UEFI is fixing that bug). configurung and upgrading a PC, and generally working on it is a lot less hassle than tiny embedded devices. also, I hope to have NBN in a year or so, so i can live with my current ADSL setup until then.
But I don't know you can buy devices in that range, and I don't think DSL targets it.
you probably can't even find them second hand any more and why would you bother even if you could find them? it's not at all difficult to find P4s and better being given away for free or just thrown out, they're considered obsolete junk (but considerably better "junk" than the 40Mhz 386 machines with 4MB - megabytes, not gigabytes - RAM that I was running SLS and then debian on in 93 and 94). craig -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au> BOFH excuse #210: We didn't pay the Internet bill and it's been cut off.