M Lu wrote:
As we are encouraged to talk about anything, I just want to ask
questions regarding running LEAF on an embedded PC. I would like to move
my LEAF on an old PC to a smaller device, such as WRAP box. The good
news is that there is some documentation about how to set it up, so I
hope I can somehow manage it.
But regarding hardware I cannot imagine it well. Because I have to order
on-line, I would like to know what pieces I need to order. I would like
to have 3 LAN and one wireless if possible. In case of wireless, do I
have to buy the card from them or can I use other cards I can buy
locally (in BestBuy, CompUSA etc)? How do I have screen/keyboard with
that etc? Could anybody explain me a little bit to me, a hardware-dumb
person?
Thank you.
First off, I don't actually _own_ a WRAP board (I own several soekris
boards, and I most likely will order a few WRAP boards some time soon,
but so far, all that I've actually used are soekris boards), so take all
of what I say with the proverbial "grain of salt". But I think I can
shed at least a little light on your questions - and hopefully somebody
else will be able to provide a more complete answer.
There's no need to worry about screen/keyboards - those kinds of things
run off a serial console - so simply plug in any PC or Laptop using a
crossover serial cable, and you can control it using a serial terminal
(minicom if you're using Linux, or one of the various tools on Windows -
I recommend teraterm, since it's free and works, which can't be said of
Hyperterminal, at least in my experience). The biggest hurdle here is
finding the proper terminal settings (default should be 9600 8N1 - but
as I said, I haven't used a WRAP box yet). It _should_ be mentioned in
the manual though.
Regarding the wireless stuff - as far as I know, all WRAP boards come
with mini-pci slots (I don't recall any with PC-Card slots) - so buying
equipment at Best Buy might be a challenge (but who knows - it's been a
while since I shopped there, so they might even have mini-pci equipment
these days). If you don't mind ordering online, you can find mini-pci
gear at various places - like http://www.netgate.com/
http://www.demarctech.com/ or http://metrix.net/metrix/ (and tons of
other places too - those are just as an example, off the top of my
head). Getting mini-pci stuff at larger chains can often be difficult,
mainly because they usually don't sell the antenna+pigtail needed (at
least here in Germany). I've used the cards from netgate with great
success on various soekris boxes (and netgate now even sells WRAP
boxes...), but that obviously doesn't mean that other sources don't work
just as well.
One last bit of advice - when using embedded boards like the WRAP (or
the soekris boards), make sure you get a suitable power supply
(preferrably the one the maker of the board suggests, not something you
happen to have lying around in your electronics junk box). Most of the
problems I've seen on the various mailing lists are due to marginal
power supplies (marginal in the sense that they provide enough power for
average usage, but fail and cause the box to crash/lock up if for some
reason power consumption jumps up).
To get going (the easy way), the only thing else you need is a CF card
reader (if you don't want to boot with PXE - I don't know if the WRAP
boards support that), so you can transfer the base image to the compact
flash card (it's also convenient to get your box back up and running if
you've mis-configured it in a way that it will no longer boot - it's
happened to me a few times, and being able to pop in the CF into my
desktop and fix things saved a lot of time).
I hope that helps
Martin
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