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I was considering starting a little project that involves extending the base role of a router to being somewhat of a home server(they're basically linux servers anyway)– but I'm more of a software person and I do not know where to find an appropriate board.

I think I need a singleboard computer capable of wireless network activity and routing packets at a decent rate for a network of home computers, with a SATA interface for a HDD a power supply and not much else.

I'm rather certain I don't even need any basic I/O because I can shell into it, or pop out the drive and just write to it from another machine.

Does anyone know a manufacturer of such a device, it is simple enough to find a fully featured board online, but it would have all sorts of stuff I don't need. For example a video card would sway the price point by the order of about $150– and I don't need one. Or if you don't know of a manufacturer, is there a kit to assemble such a board?

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do you want to alter your router firmware and install your own applications? A guy did that already to make a wi-fi radio. This is possible , you could even compile the kernel for your router. – sandun dhammika May 9 '12 at 3:24
youtube.com/watch?v=Bp26xFBwrJs There are open router firmware too.You could download the tarball and compile it. So buy a router. – sandun dhammika May 9 '12 at 3:25
Better yet, let your router (Linux-based and otherwise) just be a darn router, and get one of those low-power "appliances" for the serving. – Kaz May 9 '12 at 4:27

closed as off topic by markrages♦ May 9 '12 at 3:16

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