SFF server platform

[Kurt Wall]

On Saturday 05 February 2005 17:47, Tony Alfrey wrote:
> David Bandel wrote:
> > I rent boxes like this.  Here's what I get:
> > at CaseOutlet (http://www.caseoutlet.com/):
> > ITX 2677R using a CL1000 motherboard (two ethernet ports).  I then
> > put in either another ethernet card or a frame relay card (you'll
> > need to buy the riser card for this).  I buy neither CD-ROM nor
> > floppy, but do get either a 40Gb hdd or (better) a 1Gb flash RAM,
> > 128Mb RAM.

> Very interesting link.
> Very very newbie questions:
> a.  I assume that, with an appropriate wireless card, one can use
> this box to form an all wireless network and avoid the extra ethernet
> port? b.  w/ no CD rom, how do you load an OS?  Format and load the
> HD elsewhere first?

I don't know how David does it, but, if you get the flash RAM, you load 
the OS onto the flash and pop that into the case. That's what some our 
customers at work do. In some cases, we create the flash image by 
loading it over an Ethernet connection. I had one board, though, where 
I actually had to "cat" the 4MB kernel and RAM disk image out the 
serial port at 9600bps. The board's boot loader wouldn't handle a 
serial connection faster than 9600bps...

In the embedded space, it's quite common to load the entire OS onto 
flash and use flash as the disk. Boots real fast that way...

Kurt