My New Sidekick
I’d like to introduce my new sidekick: L’il Stiny.
L’il Stiny is actually a Linksys NSLU2, a tiny network file server for USB2.0 hard drives. I first found out about this nifty device sometime last year when Jim Buzbee published an article on Tom’s Hardware entitled “Hacking the NSLU2″. The idea was intriguing but only took root the other week when I realized a serious need for additional storage.
Out of the box, the NSLU2 is ridiculously small (less than 6″ tall) and acts a file server on your network using up to two USB drives. It runs Linux on an ARM processor, serving files via Samba. Not long after Jim’s articles exposed the unit’s internals, a small community arose dedicated to opening up this little processor for other uses.
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