[coreboot] Offtopic - Request for opinions...

[Nathanael D. Noblet]

Hello,
   Long time lurker, and old time attempter... (waay back in v1 with an 
sis 535 or something like that)...  Anyway, I have a project that our 
company may be undertaking and some of it relies on instant on / small 
form factor computers. Think kiosk type system. We'll be running linux, 
custom built or one of the super small distros, built to run off a CF 
card or boot off the network. Here's where I've got some questions that 
I imagine people on this list may have some expertise.

   We'd hope to have something that has hardware accelerated graphics 
capabilities (likely using DirectFB for graphics) so something that has 
linux drivers would be a major plus. We'd potentially like to use more 
than one monitor per device. We don't need many of the common parts on a 
regular PC or mini-ITX type boards, but are wondering what kind of 
company you would approach to get something like that built. We'd like 
to have coreboot as the bios to help with boot times etc. If you were 
looking for something like that, where would you go? Most of the miniITX 
  boards don't quite fit the need. I'm wondering what volumes you'd need 
for a custom board to reach that same price, considering we'd really 
have very little on the device, cpu, ram, cf, video and a network. Which 
   I guess describes almost all computers... Anyway, pointers on where 
to purchase, or get a board developed that could do stuff like this. 
We've initially contemplated the Via boards, but have seen that there 
are more and more offerings out there. The Geode based systems could be 
fine if there was hardware assistance for the graphics we imagine... 
Anyway, any pointers on a stuff like this would be appreciated.

-- 
Nathanael D. Noblet