My introduction to PC Engines was finding a strange embedded PC board in a pile of electronics scrap. (I think it would turn out to be an ALIX board.) Connect

My introduction to PC Engines was finding a strange embedded PC board in a pile of electronics scrap. (I think it would turn out to be an ALIX board.) Connecting to its serial port brought up a Linux prompt, but I didn't know the password. I popped the compact flash card into a reader; maybe I could see it in the password file in /etc? Hmmm... seems to be encrypted. Well I have write access too; can I just... make the password empty? I was fairly new to Linux at this time, so the fact that that worked was a huge boost to my confidence. I played around with putting different minimal Linux distros on it, and just generally having fun fooling around with a tiny x86 SBC. When I needed a new router for my home network, there was no question but that I was going to get one of these (though I got the newer APU2 board of course). I can't believe PC Engines is shutting down! End of an era.