Re: Laptops as routers
On Sat, Oct 30, 2004 at 03:20:39PM -0700, Paul Hoffman wrote: Greetings again. I'm looking to buy a couple of cheap old laptops to be used as temporary routers. They just need to be able to handle PCMCIA Ethernet cards, not much more (having an Ethernet connector on the motherboard is fine, of course.) I don't want to run XWindows, and I'm sure 64 MB and a 1gig hard drive would suffice. You may be better off with Soekris boxes, e.g. the net4801, which runs FreeBSD RELENG_5 just fine: http://www.soekris.com/ Are there any brands/models I should lean towards? Ones I should avoid? --Paul Hoffman Cheers, cpghost. -- Cordula's Web. http://www.cordula.ws/ ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Laptops as routers
On Sat, Oct 30, 2004 at 11:38:02PM -0500, Nikolas Britton wrote: Here is a better idea! Step 1: Go dumpster diving for old computers (Pentium 1 or better, 8MB IDE Storage Device or better, and a minimun of 48MB/Ram). Step 2: Grab some networks cards wail your in the dumpster. Step 3: Install said network cards into computers. Step 4: Install and configure m0n0wall on said computers. http://m0n0.ch/wall/ Step 5: Profit??? -- Total Cost: $0.00 Well, depending on your geographic location, you may want to consider power consumption as the main cost factor here. A Soekris box would consume something around 5-10 Watt or so on average. Compare this to even the slowest Pentium. Oh, and they are absolutely silent as well :-) -cpghost. -- Cordula's Web. http://www.cordula.ws/ ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Laptops as routers
* Robert Storey [EMAIL PROTECTED] [1036 04:36]: On Sun, 31 Oct 2004 01:12:19 +0200 Emanuel Strobl [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Am Sonntag, 31. Oktober 2004 00:20 schrieb Paul Hoffman: Greetings again. I'm looking to buy a couple of cheap old laptops to be used as temporary routers. They just need to be able to handle PCMCIA Ethernet cards, not much more (having an Ethernet connector on the motherboard is fine, of course.) I don't want to run XWindows, and I'm sure 64 MB and a 1gig hard drive would suffice. Are there any brands/models I should lean towards? Ones I should avoid? Bad idea IMHO. I'd suggest having a look at http://www.soekris.com/ (net4501 for easiest requirements, better 4801, all in one extendable box) or if you Or else take a look at mini-ITX: http://www.via.com.tw/en/initiatives/spearhead/mini-itx/ Good things about laptops: 1. built in console 2. built in UPS - if there's a power cut the box just runs on its battery -- common sense is what tells you that the world is flat. - Principia Discordia Rasputin :: Jack of All Trades - Master of Nuns ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Laptops as routers
At Sun, 31 Oct 2004 it looks like Emanuel Strobl composed: Am Sonntag, 31. Oktober 2004 00:20 schrieb Paul Hoffman: Greetings again. I'm looking to buy a couple of cheap old laptops to be used as temporary routers. They just need to be able to handle PCMCIA Ethernet cards, not much more (having an Ethernet connector on the motherboard is fine, of course.) I don't want to run XWindows, and I'm sure 64 MB and a 1gig hard drive would suffice. Are there any brands/models I should lean towards? Ones I should avoid? Bad idea IMHO. I'd suggest having a look at http://www.soekris.com/ (net4501 for easiest requirements, better 4801, all in one extendable box) or if you need just basic 586cpu-power without extendability and only (well designed) ethernet ports see: http://www.pcengines.ch/wrap.htm You can use any type of PC as terminal to operate these boxes vi the serial interface. Perhaps you already have any old vt100 terminal handy. But I don''t have an answer to your original question, sorry. Although I'd like to mention that old laptops often can't handle modern PC-CARDSs (CARDBUS), PCMCIA was 5v and 16 bit wide, very slow and really not sutable for routing purposes! I used to have a spare 486/dx4-100 laptop that I would use ONLY when I had to take my main machine off the grid here at home. It had the exact same ipaddr/settings as the main router/NAT machine did and it worked well. It was an old Toshiba that didn't even have a CDROM. It was that old. The thing about it was that it was brand new !! Nobody wanted to use it at my friends work so the IT guy just gave it to me. So I refer to it as my brand-new-low-mileage-1962-Ford-Falcon-laptop I would of course never have it on the net at the same time but kept the CAT5 cables just barely unsnapped at their points of entry to the network (DSL router and switch) so it would only take the time to boot it and snap in the CAT5's to be routing again. -- Bill Schoolcraft | Life's journey is not to arrive at the PO Box 210076 | grave safely in a well preserved body, San Francisco,CA 94121 | but rather to skid in sideways, totally http://billschoolcraft.com | spent, yelling holy shit, what a ride! ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Laptops as routers
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, Oct 30, 2004 at 11:38:02PM -0500, Nikolas Britton wrote: Here is a better idea! Step 1: Go dumpster diving for old computers (Pentium 1 or better, 8MB IDE Storage Device or better, and a minimun of 48MB/Ram). Step 2: Grab some networks cards wail your in the dumpster. Step 3: Install said network cards into computers. Step 4: Install and configure m0n0wall on said computers. http://m0n0.ch/wall/ Step 5: Profit??? -- Total Cost: $0.00 Well, depending on your geographic location, you may want to consider power consumption as the main cost factor here. A Soekris box would consume something around 5-10 Watt or so on average. Compare this to even the slowest Pentium. Oh, and they are absolutely silent as well :-) -cpghost. The Soekris boxes are awesome, I'd LOVE to have one, But even with the power consumption, size, fanless arguments I still cannot justify the cost ($194 for a net4501-30 Board, Case, and PS) when I have old computers taking up space in my workshop. Money doesn't grow on trees in the world of small business. If you are worry about power consumption or reliability when using old computers I have some general tips for you: 1. Don't use a storage device that has spinning disks, instead use a CF card, Zip Drive/Disk, etc. http://www.cfide.co.uk/compact_flash_ide_adapters.shtml 2. Remove all non-essential components from the system (CD-Roms, Hard drives, floppy drives, add-in cards, etc) and disable in the BIOS anything that can't be removed (floppy controller, sound card, printer and serial ports, secondary IDE controller, etc.). 3. Underclock and/or mount a big heatsink onto the CPU so you can remove the cpu fan. 4. One 64MB stick of ram uses less power then two 32MB sticks, follow that logic. 5. Remove some or all case fans because, Heat Isn't an issue unless your cpu is like 400Mhz+, you will still have the power supply fan for cooling. CPU (at full load): 30 Watts Mainboard: 10 Watts RAM: 5 Watts 3 NIC: 15 Watts 1 Fan: 5 Watts The Unkown: 10 Watts --- Total: 75 Watt Light Bulb It will take me 3.98 years just to recoup the cost of the net4501. (g+a)/d/c = h = 34931 (3.98 years) a/d/c = e, be = f, fd = g a = net4501-30 Board, Case, and Power Supply = $194 b = power used by net4501 = 0.012kWh c = power used by oldcomp = 0.075kWh d = Price (residential) of 1kWh = $0.0859 http://www.midamericanenergy.com/html/aboutus2.asp e = Number of hours I can run the computer until I spend $194 (the price of the net4501) in power. f = How many kWh the net4501 will uses in the same amount of time that it takes me the spend $194 in power using the computer. g = The price of those kWh's the net4501 uses h = How long (in hours) it will take to recoup the cost of buying the net4501 instead of just using an old computer. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Laptops as routers
If you are worry about power consumption or reliability when using old computers I have some general tips for you: 1. Don't use a storage device that has spinning disks, instead use a CF card, Zip Drive/Disk, etc. http://www.cfide.co.uk/compact_flash_ide_adapters.shtml To go off on a bit of a tangent here, I find the idea of replacing hard drives with flash memory intriguing. When I first heard someone talk about doing this several years ago, the idea was quickly shot down by people saying that flash memory has a very short lifetime when you write to it. Even a system as minimal as a firewall will require frequent write operations if it does any logging at all. Has this limitation been overcome in recent years? Google isn't turning up any recent articles on this subject for me. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Laptops as routers
Luke wrote: If you are worry about power consumption or reliability when using old computers I have some general tips for you: 1. Don't use a storage device that has spinning disks, instead use a CF card, Zip Drive/Disk, etc. http://www.cfide.co.uk/compact_flash_ide_adapters.shtml To go off on a bit of a tangent here, I find the idea of replacing hard drives with flash memory intriguing. When I first heard someone talk about doing this several years ago, the idea was quickly shot down by people saying that flash memory has a very short lifetime when you write to it. Even a system as minimal as a firewall will require frequent write operations if it does any logging at all. Has this limitation been overcome in recent years? Google isn't turning up any recent articles on this subject for me. Yes and No, The problem is still there but when your dealing with an 8MB FreeBSD system (m0n0wall) all's you have to do is make a ram drive and copy the system to it. Then the only time you access the Flash device is at boot or when making changes to the config file, etc, this is how m0n0wall does it. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Laptops as routers
On Sunday 31 October 2004 21:54, Luke wrote: If you are worry about power consumption or reliability when using old computers I have some general tips for you: 1. Don't use a storage device that has spinning disks, instead use a CF card, Zip Drive/Disk, etc. http://www.cfide.co.uk/compact_flash_ide_adapters.shtml To go off on a bit of a tangent here, I find the idea of replacing hard drives with flash memory intriguing. When I first heard someone talk about doing this several years ago, the idea was quickly shot down by people saying that flash memory has a very short lifetime when you write to it. Even a system as minimal as a firewall will require frequent write operations if it does any logging at all. Has this limitation been overcome in recent years? Google isn't turning up any recent articles on this subject for me. I know that embedded OSs, like VxWorks, have dedicated flash filesystems that do wear-levelling. These filesystems avoid having special physical locations, and make sure all date is occasionally moved around to prevent the concentration of damage. I believe that some flash storage devices have this built in to the hardware nowdays. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Laptops as routers
On Sun, Oct 31, 2004 at 01:54:33PM -0800, Luke wrote: To go off on a bit of a tangent here, I find the idea of replacing hard drives with flash memory intriguing. When I first heard someone talk about doing this several years ago, the idea was quickly shot down by people saying that flash memory has a very short lifetime when you write to it. Even a system as minimal as a firewall will require frequent write operations if it does any logging at all. Has this limitation been overcome in recent years? Google isn't turning up any recent articles on this subject for me. No, the limited write cycles problem is still there, but not as bad as you might imagine. In most cases, all you need to do is to put /var and /tmp on a memory filesystem, and archive only compressed logs either to flash or to a remote server every now and then, thus greatly reducing the write access cycles to your flash card. But this is not always a useful solution (e.g. if you want to run an MTA like postfix which accesses the filesystem that holds the mail queues quite frequently). Sometimes, a 2.5 harddisk (I don't know about microdisks' durability) is your only recourse. Cheers, cpghost. -- Cordula's Web. http://www.cordula.ws/ ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Laptops as routers
Greetings again. I'm looking to buy a couple of cheap old laptops to be used as temporary routers. They just need to be able to handle PCMCIA Ethernet cards, not much more (having an Ethernet connector on the motherboard is fine, of course.) I don't want to run XWindows, and I'm sure 64 MB and a 1gig hard drive would suffice. Are there any brands/models I should lean towards? Ones I should avoid? --Paul Hoffman ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Laptops as routers
Am Sonntag, 31. Oktober 2004 00:20 schrieb Paul Hoffman: Greetings again. I'm looking to buy a couple of cheap old laptops to be used as temporary routers. They just need to be able to handle PCMCIA Ethernet cards, not much more (having an Ethernet connector on the motherboard is fine, of course.) I don't want to run XWindows, and I'm sure 64 MB and a 1gig hard drive would suffice. Are there any brands/models I should lean towards? Ones I should avoid? Bad idea IMHO. I'd suggest having a look at http://www.soekris.com/ (net4501 for easiest requirements, better 4801, all in one extendable box) or if you need just basic 586cpu-power without extendability and only (well designed) ethernet ports see: http://www.pcengines.ch/wrap.htm You can use any type of PC as terminal to operate these boxes vi the serial interface. Perhaps you already have any old vt100 terminal handy. But I don''t have an answer to your original question, sorry. Although I'd like to mention that old laptops often can't handle modern PC-CARDSs (CARDBUS), PCMCIA was 5v and 16 bit wide, very slow and really not sutable for routing purposes! -Harry --Paul Hoffman ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] pgpEGi9YLnLa1.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Laptops as routers
On Sun, 31 Oct 2004 01:12:19 +0200 Emanuel Strobl [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Am Sonntag, 31. Oktober 2004 00:20 schrieb Paul Hoffman: Greetings again. I'm looking to buy a couple of cheap old laptops to be used as temporary routers. They just need to be able to handle PCMCIA Ethernet cards, not much more (having an Ethernet connector on the motherboard is fine, of course.) I don't want to run XWindows, and I'm sure 64 MB and a 1gig hard drive would suffice. Are there any brands/models I should lean towards? Ones I should avoid? Bad idea IMHO. I'd suggest having a look at http://www.soekris.com/ (net4501 for easiest requirements, better 4801, all in one extendable box) or if you Or else take a look at mini-ITX: http://www.via.com.tw/en/initiatives/spearhead/mini-itx/ regards, Robert ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Laptops as routers
Paul Hoffman wrote: Greetings again. I'm looking to buy a couple of cheap old laptops to be used as temporary routers. They just need to be able to handle PCMCIA Ethernet cards, not much more (having an Ethernet connector on the motherboard is fine, of course.) I don't want to run XWindows, and I'm sure 64 MB and a 1gig hard drive would suffice. Are there any brands/models I should lean towards? Ones I should avoid? --Paul Hoffman ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Here is a better idea! Step 1: Go dumpster diving for old computers (Pentium 1 or better, 8MB IDE Storage Device or better, and a minimun of 48MB/Ram). Step 2: Grab some networks cards wail your in the dumpster. Step 3: Install said network cards into computers. Step 4: Install and configure m0n0wall on said computers. http://m0n0.ch/wall/ Step 5: Profit??? -- Total Cost: $0.00 ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Laptops as routers
Oh... If you don't want to do the dumpster diving then you can get some good stuff here: http://www.retrobox.com/rbwww/home/search_results_pc_computers.asp?bin_id=worldpage=1Manufacturer_ID=CPU_ID=CPU_Speed_ID=RAM_ID=HD_Size_ID=CD_ROM_Flag=Price=order_by=price%5Fcurrent%5Fselling%5Fprice+asc Shipping Handling is $27.50 per unit though. Nikolas Britton wrote: Paul Hoffman wrote: Greetings again. I'm looking to buy a couple of cheap old laptops to be used as temporary routers. They just need to be able to handle PCMCIA Ethernet cards, not much more (having an Ethernet connector on the motherboard is fine, of course.) I don't want to run XWindows, and I'm sure 64 MB and a 1gig hard drive would suffice. Are there any brands/models I should lean towards? Ones I should avoid? --Paul Hoffman ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Here is a better idea! Step 1: Go dumpster diving for old computers (Pentium 1 or better, 8MB IDE Storage Device or better, and a minimun of 48MB/Ram). Step 2: Grab some networks cards wail your in the dumpster. Step 3: Install said network cards into computers. Step 4: Install and configure m0n0wall on said computers. http://m0n0.ch/wall/ Step 5: Profit??? -- Total Cost: $0.00 ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
