Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1999 08:44:34 -0700 (PDT) From: David Wolfskill <dhw@whistle.com> To: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Subject: First time for my own PC hardware Message-ID: <199907211544.IAA55522@pau-amma.whistle.com>
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OK; some of y'all may recognize that I'm no "newbie" to UNIX. But after almost 1.5 years of administering FreeBSD boxen here, and working with various UNIX environments since 1986, multi-user systems since '70, and computers since '69, I finally broke down and bought some PC hardware over the weekend -- first time. Grrr.... :-( OK. I picked up a used box from one of my favorite "asset recovery" shops, with the intent to start turning it into a router & NAT box. (DSL install is scheduled for a week from today. Pac*Bell doesn't seem to care how I use it (as long as I don't spam with it), so among other things, I'm planning on running a nameserver where I can do primary nameservice for some set of domains, and also do secondary nameservice in exchange for reciprocity with others similarly-inclined and -situated. This, for those whose only exposure to the Internet has been post-UUNet, is the way Things Used To Be -- as far as DNS is concerned, anyway.) So I installed FreeBSD 3.2-R from the USENIX CD on it, and it seems to be going reasonably well. I don't have the (static) IP assignment yet, so there's only so much I can do with it, but that work is progressing reasonably well. In the mean time, I also started getting what I (thought I) needed to put together a replacement desktop for my wife. She's currently using our venerable Sun 3/60 (that's an 11-year-old box, folks) that is completely stuffed with 24 MB RAM; it runs X, as well as being the externally-visible machine when its PPP connection is up, and in that capacity also runs the Apache Web server (in proxy mode), so we can run Netscape on my desktop (a SPARCstation-5/110, Solaris 2.6). Same asset-recovery shop had some ATX chassis/power supplies, so I picked one up. Happened across a decent-seeming shop that had PC hardware during a freelance consulting gig, so I bought an ASUS P5A motherboard & some hardware to stuff in it. (And a monitor, since the monitors I have are Sun monitors.) Got everything home, and found that "ATX" apparently doesn't mean that an "ATX" motherboard will necessarily fit in an "ATX" chassis. :-( And the motherboard seemed to be shy one jumper (for setting the voltage to the CPU core). And neither the motherboard nor the chassis had any screws for attaching one to the other. So I guess I get to take the chassis back, go to the place where I got the motherboard, get a chassis that fits, and get an extra jumper & some screws.... If I'm able to get the box put together, and if everything works, I think the result should be a dramatic improvement over the 3/60. :-} (Since she's currently using tvtwm, I know I can support that under FreeBSD, 'cause that's what I'm using as I type this. Maybe I'll try one of the fancier desktops... if I also get some additional memory for the box. I'm currently using 32 MB on this desktop at work, so I thought that 64 MB for her machine should be reasonable.) I keep getting the impression that PC hardware is ... quirky (to put it nicely). No real questions (though suggestions are welcome); just thought I'd share (and rant) a little. Cheers, david -- David Wolfskill dhw@whistle.com UNIX System Administrator voice: (650) 577-7158 pager: (888) 347-0197 FAX: (650) 372-5915 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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