A couple of new posts to a related thread over in the forum at Small Net Builder points me to a new take on the project. Kevin Hanson has reworked it to address…How to: Building a Squeezebox Server for under $100… Yes, it can be done…
The $100 goal is certainly appealing. In my own case I think I was in that range. The T5700 that I used as a host was recycled, donated by a friend in IT at a nearby company. I purchased only the 2.5″ disk, a larger memory DIMM and the optional expansion chassis for the T5700. I’m guessing that I spent around $150. Some of it was discretionary since the expansion chassis was $30 that wasn’t truly required.
Kevin may face an issue based upon using the 128 MB of memory included in his T5500 thin client. My suspicion is that’s not quite enough to run both FreeNAS and SlimNAS reliably. Of course, he’s using Debian Linux instead of FreeNAS so he may be able to strip it down very small. I started out with 256 MB of memory, and upped it to 512 MB to get it running well.
In any case, congratulations are in order. It’s nice to see people building upon things that I’ve tried. I helps keep my motivated about taking on new projects.