{"id":4080,"date":"2008-12-07T09:49:25","date_gmt":"2008-12-07T14:49:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/?p=4080"},"modified":"2008-12-07T09:49:25","modified_gmt":"2008-12-07T14:49:25","slug":"the-little-computer-that-should","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/07\/the-little-computer-that-should\/","title":{"rendered":"the little computer that should"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My home server went phut last week. There was a brief power outage, and everything else came back on &#8212; except the server. It was a three year old Mini-ITX box, and I&#8217;m casting about for ways to replace it.<\/p>\n<p>To serve my immediate music serving and podcasting needs, I have pressed The Only Computer That Runs Windows into service, running Ubuntu using <a href=\"http:\/\/wubi-installer.org\/\">Wubi<\/a>. Unfortunately, I do still occasionally need to run Garmin Mapsource, which only runs on Windows, and also The Only Computer That Runs Windows is also rather too nice a laptop to be sat doing server duty.<\/p>\n<p>I have some options:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Get a new motherboard for the mini-itx box. Via still has some crazy ideas about pricing (over $200 for a fanless C7?) but maybe I&#8217;ll go for Intel&#8217;s snappily-named <a href=\"http:\/\/www.intel.com\/Products\/Desktop\/Motherboards\/D945GCLF\/D945GCLF-overview.htm\">D945GCLF<\/a>, which looks okay for what I need and is only $80.<\/li>\n<li>I could resurrect the old Athlon box I got in 2002, but it&#8217;s big, loud, and its components are probably near end of life. Also, why disturb a mature spider habitat?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What I was really looking for was one of those tiny fanless internet appliance boxes that were so 2007 (like the Koolu and the Zonbu, both of which have moved on to <a href=\"http:\/\/koolu.com\/\">other<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.zonbu.com\/\">things<\/a>), but such units, without the tied storage service contract, are upwards of $500.<\/p>\n<p>My needs are simple:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>run <a href=\"http:\/\/fireflymediaserver.org\/\">Firefly<\/a> to feed the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.roku.com\/products_soundbridge.php\">Soundbridges<\/a>;<\/li>\n<li>generate <a href=\"http:\/\/scruss.com\/autocast\/\">the automatic podcast<\/a> every day, which realistically means a linux box with Perl, sqlite and the like;<\/li>\n<li>have something to ssh into when <span style=\"text-decoration: line-through;\">boredom strikes<\/span> the need arises. Perhaps unwise having an open machine sitting directly on the internet, but only the ssh port will be open.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I really also need to get rid of all the computer junk in the basement. It now includes two fritzed mini-ITX systems and the world&#8217;s slowest PostScript laser printer. Such fun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My home server went phut last week. There was a brief power outage, and everything else came back on &#8212; except the server. It was a three year old Mini-ITX box, and I&#8217;m casting about for ways to replace it. To serve my immediate music serving and podcasting needs, I have pressed The Only Computer [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[1332,1371,1110,270,668,45,1383,1278,1355,974],"class_list":["post-4080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers-suck","tag-daap","tag-firefly","tag-junk","tag-linux","tag-mini_itx","tag-mp3","tag-podcast","tag-server","tag-soundbridge","tag-ssh"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQNZZ-13O","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4080"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4081,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4080\/revisions\/4081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}