From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Feb 15 00:05:25 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id AAA18757 for hackers-outgoing; Thu, 15 Feb 1996 00:05:25 -0800 (PST) Received: from tfs.com (tfs.com [140.145.250.1]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id AAA18752 Thu, 15 Feb 1996 00:05:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from critter.tfs.com by tfs.com (smail3.1.28.1) with SMTP id m0tmyf2-0003wZC; Thu, 15 Feb 96 00:03 PST Received: from localhost.tfs.com (localhost.tfs.com [127.0.0.1]) by critter.tfs.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) with SMTP id IAA01510; Thu, 15 Feb 1996 08:31:38 +0100 X-Authentication-Warning: critter.tfs.com: Host localhost.tfs.com didn't use HELO protocol To: Warner Losh cc: Joe Greco , sef@kithrup.com (Sean Eric Fagan), dennis@etinc.com, louie@transsys.com, hackers@freebsd.org, isp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Frame Relay and FreeBSD In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 14 Feb 1996 15:38:03 MST." <199602142238.PAA05910@rover.village.org> Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 08:31:37 +0100 Message-ID: <1508.824369497@critter.tfs.com> From: Poul-Henning Kamp Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk > One thing to keep in mind is that PCs also come in 4"x4"x4" cubes that > are expandible via PC-104 bus cards. Something like this could easily > stack like firewood to fill a small space in little time. Put a > ramdisk or flashram card inot this mix, run FreeBSD on it and you have > a nice little box. I believe that these boxes are 100% PC compatible, > but am not 100% positive. They are showing up in places like the > Circuit Cellar magazine. I don't hink you'll find a pentium on one of > these boxes, but I recall seeing 386 and 486 in them. These are the absolute craze in automation and industrial environments. You can get P5s, I've even seen a P6 prerelease. Mostly you get a cpu card with all the std: ram sockets, 2s1p, 2ide, 1fd and a pc/104 and a ISA connector. You can then either put them in a passive ISA bus, or use the PC/104 or both. You can stack a 16 port server into no space with these. I have personally seen one 19" rack unit about 8" high, contain a server (4G/32G/P5/90) and four clients (0G/16M/486/66) where each of the clients had 32 serial ports. Inside the box was a 1' ethernet, and the server had a second ethernet to "the big world". The point about this, in the words of the owner: "The users run no processes on the server. It's almost impossible to hack it. They can try to hack the client, but it will reboot if it think it has been hacked, and on a reboot everything is rebuilt from the servers R/O copy so it's a shortlived glory." Of course the modems took up 10 times as much space... -- Poul-Henning Kamp | phk@FreeBSD.ORG FreeBSD Core-team. http://www.freebsd.org/~phk | phk@login.dknet.dk Private mailbox. whois: [PHK] | phk@ref.tfs.com TRW Financial Systems, Inc. Future will arrive by its own means, progress not so.