it worked, wow, i feel so bad now for wasting your time, the help was appreciated.

You can put together a board, case, and PS at Netgate for $161 (Q=10+). That saves $20 off of the kit, you can pick up cf cards cheaper from newegg and such. I've always had good service from them. Shipping would be from TX, so I'm not sure what that would work out to.

Depending on the chipset and BIOS the non-PAE kernel can generally address about 3GB of physical memory. (The remainder of the 4GB physical address space is 'reserved' for addressing CPU registers, PCI device memory address space etc.) The message about memory above 4GB being ignored should be treated as an informational message rather than an error message. If it troubles people just remove some of the RAM (and possibly reuse it in another system). Using a PAE kernel will not make any more memory available for kernel data structures such as firewall rules, state tables, routes etc but it will make more memory available to hold applications in memory (possibly reducing swapping and paging). Therefore I suspect that for most pfSense users a PAE kernel would be of no substantial benefit.

Just another update here… it seems that whatever the problem was with the cards has mysteriously ceased. I started 20 torrents with the biggest dvd iso's of linux I could find and whatever else that was big enough to kill my connection for the night, reboot pfSense, and went to bed.  10 on the LAN subnet (sis1) and 10 on the OPT1 subnet (sis0).  Also had music streaming from opt1 to LAN, and wrote a simple batch file to constantly send an iso 'the ultimate boot cd' back and forth across the connections. So far, it doesn't seem like the error has cropped up anymore.  I'm guessing once the 'short cable fix' is set, it works from then on, even across reboots?  I don't see any more of that message other than the ones right after the cards are initialized. Odd thing is that before re-formatting and installing pfSense 1.2.3RC1 from the ISO instead of 1.01>updated to 1.2.3RC1, I saw this message at least 5 times an hour.  Clean install FTW? confused.

Sorry, I have no interest in the subject so don't remember the content of the thread, or have the time to do your research for you.  It will take you just as long to use the Search button, or read thread titles, as it will for me.

dalfarra: Are you talking about the VIA EPIA-M700, or the older VIA EPIA-M (http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/mainboards/motherboards.jsp?motherboard_id=81)

The gotcha is that as soon as you start doing something more than just routing, you're away from their speciality.  You'll probably be better off with a multi-core Intel/AMD box.  Remember too that particularly the Routerboard will have an OS that's been tweaked or custom designed for it to get the most out of it.  You're installing what's really a general purpose OS. Unfortunately it's nearly impossible to say "you want this hardware" as once you get beyond the usual sub 20 Mb/s asymmetric links and a purely firewall setup your traffic profile becomes more significant. What you posted suggests that you really want Intel Server GBit NICS (not just any old brand, or the plain desktop ones) and you probably want a PCI-e based motherboard.  Memory matters a lot with lots of connections (see the link Perry posted), don't skimp.  A multi-core processor will probably help too.  I'd suggest you look at a mini-ITX type package.  The Atom is good if you're going to max it out a lot, but if it's mostly idle (ie when you're asleep or at work) then a standard multi-core chip will be more efficient.  Something like the Intel DG45FC or Zotac GeForce 9300-ITX may be appropriate - the latter has Realtek Gbit onboard, but a 16x PCI-e slot for a multi-port Intel Server card and so may be a better choice.

You should probably try pfSense 1.2.3 - see http://blog.pfsense.org/?p=377 There is a link on the referenced page to a page from which you can download a number of snapshot builds.

Intel.  Get the server versions of their cards if you can muster the extra $$.  Newegg usually has pretty good prices on them.

Hi, I've used two of the Transcend 2GB Sata Modules in my experimental boxes. Installation takes very long - I suspect this is due to some general SSD issues with writing a large number of files. And i did get the following error message: FAILURE - SETFEATURES SET TRANSFER MODE status=51 <ready,dsc,error>error=4 <aborted>Seems to be something with the DMA Mode… Other than that it seems to run fine. One of my boxes has an uptime of >6 months - without any errors/troubles/... Btw. it's a full install, not embedded. And the usual disclaimer: Don't use flash-drives with a full installation because they will break at some point. For the risks involved search this forum :) Bye, S.</aborted></ready,dsc,error>

My ALIX box draws 5w according to a Kill-a-Watt.  It varies up or down by a watt or two depending on how busy the CPU is.

http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?action=search "force media"

I am running on a Via VB8001 with their new Nano processor. It draws the same as an atom under idle, and has built in encryption acceleration for VPN. It supports PCE-E so I have a dual port Intel card in there. Runs really smooth, and draws less than 40 watts under 'standard' usage.

@wallabybob: Its probably worthwhile lodging a FreeBSD problem report (goto http://www.freebsd.org/support/bugreports.html) to initiate a conversation with the FreeBSD developers about this. At best someone will need to add an entry to the "supported devices" table in the re driver. But there might need to be more work done, depending on the peculiarities of this particular device. Thanks, done that, this is their response to problem report : Old Synopsis: Realtek 8110SC with device ID 0x814910ec is not detected by FreeBSD 7.1. Most of New Mini-ITX boards are based on this chip. New Synopsis: rl(4) Realtek 8110SC with device ID 0x814910ec not detected State-Changed-From-To: open->feedback State-Changed-By: gavin State-Changed-When: Thu Apr 30 20:06:18 UTC 2009 State-Changed-Why: To submitter: can you please try the patch at http://people.freebsd.org/~gavin/PRs/134105.diff and see if that makes a difference?  If you still do not get the extra interfaces, you should at least get extra lines in the dmesg, please supply them.  Thanks! Responsible-Changed-From-To: freebsd-i386->gavin Responsible-Changed-By: gavin Responsible-Changed-When: Thu Apr 30 20:06:18 UTC 2009 Responsible-Changed-Why: Track http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=134105 I am not familiar with applying patches. Is there any guides?