Pfsense on VIA C7 EPIA M700-10E

[romainp]

Hi guys,
I hope that someone can give me some answers and good advices about some hardware related question:

I'm a newbie with pfsense and with mini itx related hardware but I want to buy a small box equiped with a via C7 processor on a EPIA M700 10E motherboard.
Specs are : http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/embedded/ProductDetail.jsp?motherboard_id=670

I am pretty sure that PF will runs a this motherboard but:

• I am planning to put a sata disk on it (2.5 inches), is the internal controller will run the sata disk as an ide one? (like an emulation mode). For what I see the sata/IDE controller is a VIA VX800 (http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/chipsets/v-series/vx800/). Does not seems to appear in the HCL of Freebsd 7.0…
• Are the NIC will work also?

Thanks for all the information you will nicely share with me.
Romain

[wallabybob]

The datasheet lists the two gigabit NICs as VIA VT6130. The FreeBSD 7.2 hardware support at http://www.freebsd.org/releases/7.2R/hardware.html doesn't list the VT6130. You'll probably be better off selecting another board if you want to use onboard NICs.If you search the forums for mini-ITX you'll probably some reports of mini-ITX boards with dual gigE NICs that have been demonstrated to work with pfSense.

[kc8apf]

If you aren't tied to using mini-ITX, there are a few other systems you can use that are fully supported.  I've been using a Lanner FW7520 with great success.  Other have used the FabiaTech FX5620 or FX5621.  Depending on your exact bandwidth and processing needs, a Soekris Engineering system might be a good fit.