Date: Tue, 30 Jan 1996 14:03:09 -0600 (CST) From: Joe Greco <jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com> To: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Cc: scott@thuntek.net, hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Multi-Port Async Cards Message-ID: <199601302003.OAA05743@brasil.moneng.mei.com> In-Reply-To: <5929.822963349@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Jan 29, 96 04:55:49 pm
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> > Oh now THAT is disgustingly economical!! I applaud your ingenuity. I ran a > > diskless terminal server for a while myself, thought I was the only wierdo > > who would think to do something that odd... :-) > > I agree - I was kind of impressed when I read this. What's that make > a 4 modem increment cost, about $1500 all in? I don't know what kind > of modem cards are being used here so that's just a WAG. I've never > purchased a terminal mux, either, so I don't even know if this would > be competitive? Do you have these guys set up to advertise the modems > at some IP port range as well for outgoing stuff, or is that purely > incoming? You could do some interesting resource pooling with a few > cooperating daemons.. Hmmmm... [stares off into space for awhile :-] Think bigger, now: 16 ports. High quality external modems. 486DX4/120+MB $200 SMC Ethernet $100 Case/PS/Floppy $100 8MB RAM $250 BocaBoard2016 $230 16xMotorola28.8 $3680 ----- $4560 Even with a disk, this would be quite inexpensive for a fully provisioned terminal server. To compare pricewise to a 10-port Livingston Portmaster 2 (list $2,495), I can put together a high performance FreeBSD box with a disk ($200) for $1080. Add another 8MB of RAM and I'm at $1330, about half the price of the Livingston and I have 60% more ports. To compare pricewise to a 30-port Livingston Portmaster 2E-30 (list $3,750) I could build two of my above boxes, for $2660, have two MORE ports than the Livingston, and still have $5 in beer money for 218 days left over. And remember if you're on a budget, you CUT CORNERS! See if you can get your cousin's old 486DX2/66 MB for $50. Convince him he needs a Pentium. Use an NE-2000 card, $35. Get a dirt cheap case ($30) and to hell with the floppy. Stick at 8MB of used RAM ($200) and run diskless. Now the box only costs $545 instead of $1330. We're still wayyyyyyyy ahead of the bang-for-buck curve. AND the whole thing is totally programmable. FreeBSD's been blowing my socks off for a long time. ;-) ... Joe ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joe Greco - Systems Administrator jgreco@ns.sol.net Solaria Public Access UNIX - Milwaukee, WI 414/546-7968
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