I'm looking for a development board to run a fairly simple bit of logic between a number of interfaces (10/100 Ethernet, wifi (802.11b is fine), and >=2 serial ports). The application itself won't need a huge amount of RAM or flash; driving the interfaces is going to be the biggest load. It's going to be plugged into the mains so power isn't an issue. Ideally, it will have the rare qualities of both rapid prototyping and ease of translation into a cheaply manufacturable board :) The latter is something I don't have much experience of, so any tips would be great ;)
My feeling is that the application won't require a full OS, but that a linux-on-arm solution (although heavyweight) might be best, as the network stacks etc will be there already and it'll be easy to bring up and extensible if we need it. If I went for a low end micro core, I'd still need to fit the network stacks in somewhere (FPGA? integrated modules like DIGI ME?).
I've seen Gumstix mentioned, and they do seem to have a nice set of little boards, although I guess the compact flash WIFI solution might take a bit of modification for our ultimate requirements. I've also looked at Cirrus's ARM9-based systems, which would mean USB -> wifi; again, I worry that this might be a pain when we are doing a slick transition to our own manufacture-grade board. On a non-ARM linux front, the Axis 82+ boards might do what I want, but I don't know anyone with experience of those - would anyone rec them or otherwise?
Any other suggestions of boards or manufacturers to try very gratefully received :)
Thanks in advance,
Laurie