[aklug] Re: Uses for Old Computers?

From: Jim MacDonald <jim@macdonald.org>
Date: Thu Jul 17 2008 - 08:25:38 AKDT

 
Aaron,

There is a another possibility for their use and it won't cost you much in
the way of hardware upgrades.

go to WalMart. and buy two of the cheapest nic's they have (this works
betterwith two nic's of the same make) as long as they are NOT broadcom
based. then go to www.smoothwall.org[1] and download the latest version of
the ISO. This is a single use Linux distro that works as a hardware
firewall.It has TONS of addons that allow you to shape and monitor traffic
inand out of your house.

Cheers,

Jim

Aaron A. wrote: --- On Mon, 7/14/08, I wrote: Still open to suggestions for
the other rig Yeah, about that... I think I spoke too soon. Apparently we'd
already wipe= d and given away the first computer, and the second one is
botholder and l= ess functional than I thought it was. I sort of inherited
this computer from a former roommate, so I had only gue= ssed at its specs
earlier.=A0 It's an off-the-rack NEC Ready 9887 (Pentium = II 350 MHz, 64MB
RAM expandable to 384MB, DVD-ROM, hard drive reportedly fa= iled Summer
2000,looks like somebody tried to take it apart. Assuming har= d drive is
FUBAR.) According to the former owner, I was right insofar as i= t ran Win98
in its later years, but it was very slow. Long story short, I'= m dealing
with the standard bargain-basement computer of 1996. Even with no upgrading,
though, the computer appears to meet the minimum re= quirements for
FreeNAS.=A0 Add'l RAM is available by mail-order for $30 per= 128MB, which
puts it on my "nice to have" list. The former owner doesn't = care what I do
with it; she assumed I'd have dissected it by now.=A0 If I h= ave to buy
memory and additional hard drives*, this starts getting into "ju= st buy a
NAS appliance" territory. As it stands now, though, the project w= ould be
cheap and educational. -- Aaron A. akbeancounter@yahoo.com[2] * My NAS will
need at least RAID 1 if I'm going to entrust it with the only=
readily-accessible copy of my files. The super-important stuff, of course= ,
is burned onto read-only media and stored offsite.=0A=0A=0A --------- To
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--- Links ---
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   2 mailto:akbeancounter@yahoo.com
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Received on Thu Jul 17 08:25:54 2008

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