Hi there, this is my first post and, while it is fresh in my mind, I wanted to tell people how I got an Eon Neoware 4000s Thin Client to work with OpenWRT.
These are a very cheap machine that you can buy on ebay (I got mine for £20 GBP (about $35 USD)).
I used a Compact Flash device to boot from because that obviously makes the whole thing silent as the 4000s is a fanless system based on the geode x86 CPU.
It is possible to use a normal IDE drive but it would have to remain outside the case and would make it very noisy.
Neoware 4000s are low power and very fast (I think mine is 600mhz but I cant remember) there is one onboard NIC and a PCI slot to add the second NIC
Things you will need
An IDE cable
A Compact Flash Card (mine is 128MB I suggest you use the same size or find out what the minimum requirements are for your version of OpenWRT)
A compact flash card reader with an IDE interface
A network card supported by the OpenWRT drivers
A monitor to attach the device to
A PS2 Keyboard (I dont know if USB keyboards work on it)
you will also need to purchase or make a power cable with a floppy drive connector at both ends for CF - (with a 4 pin molex at one end if you use a hard drive)
Preparation
Download a copy of openWRT to your main computer and write it to the CF card. Use the latest stable x86 version
Open the box and take out the Disk On Module drive that you will see plugged into the IDE slot
Now plug the compact flash reader into one end of the ide cable and plug the other end into the connector on the motherboard
I glued the CF reader to the inside of the case (careful not to make it short on the case or motherboard)
Next to the IDE connector on the motherboard, you will see a 4 pin power connector which you should use to power the disk or CF device
Now plug the NIC into the pci slot
put the case back together and setup the box with peripherals.
First Boot
On first boot enter the bios by holding down the delete key at POST
for some reason mine would only boot with the default settings but with the serial and parallel ports disabled
and with the boot device set to "C Only"
If boot fails
If OpenWRT fails to load when you first boot it play with the bios settings and see what works for you.
make sure that the CF device is configured as master drive
(A normal IDE drive would only work for me if I set the jumpers on the drive to "cable select")
When it works
When I booted mine the LAN device was the NIC on the PCI slot and the WAN is the onboard NIC
I had to add a WAN port after I gained access via the web interface on 192.168.1.1
LAN was on eth0 and I selected eth1 to be the WAN
I set up the WAN to pick up an IP address off DHCP and rebooted and it worked
I hope this helps someone now or in the future
I can tell you these devices run OpenWRT with no problem and are much faster than other devices I have used
My biggest problem was getting the bios setup correctly but after messing with that for an hour or so i hit the right combination
(Last edited by jimmysaville on 22 Nov 2011, 19:03)