APNIC Box – Linux on a Mikrotik 532a, Part 1 – The Device

I put this device together for fun sometime around the start of 2007. The ideas that spawned this was using OpenWRT on a Linksys WRT54G access point. A surprisingly powerful and full linux distro with all kinds of advanced capabilities running on a Linksys wireless router which I’d previously thought to be a reasonably dumb device with computing power more comparable to a calculator than a PC. The project opened my eyes to embedded devices, and I wondered what device base I should start with. To cut a long story short and for reasons that I can’t even remember anymore I came across the Mikrotik Routerboard 532A and decided that I should start with that.