I have a hard time beliving that. I remember when I had a 486DX-33 with 2 Ethernet cards as a masq. box in college. The throughput of the box topped out at .5MByte/s. (That's in one interface and out the other - in Linux 2.0.12, IIRC) Now you're telling me a 200+Mhz StrongARM won't have idle time?

It's not like it's playing MP3s and/or vis'ing at the same time. I could understand if it were, 'cause my 166 could barely play them

I guess I'll have to login and run top during a sync when I get home...

Now what I could believe is that the harddrive is too slow, but I'd expect them to be using DMA.