Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 14:04:20 -0700 From: John-Mark Gurney <jmg@hydrogen.nike.efn.org> To: Vincent Poy <vince@mail.MCESTATE.COM> Cc: isp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Some advice needed. Message-ID: <19970411140419.02141@hydrogen.nike.efn.org> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.95.970411112757.11771O-100000@mail.MCESTATE.COM>; from Vincent Poy on Fri, Apr 11, 1997 at 11:31:23AM -0700 References: <19970411032131.61820@hydrogen.nike.efn.org> <Pine.BSF.3.95.970411112757.11771O-100000@mail.MCESTATE.COM>
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Vincent Poy scribbled this message on Apr 11: > On Fri, 11 Apr 1997, John-Mark Gurney wrote: > > > > What is the maximum modems a multi-port serial card can handle and > > > how many can you put into a box? > > > > well there are many different brands... Comtrol, Stallion, Cyclades, and > > RISCom all make boards that have drivers for FreeBSD... Stallion has a PCI > > card supporting 64 ports off one card... with something like this smart > > board it's more or of a question of how much cpu power you put under the > > hood on the number of ports you can support... > > I always thought RICom was more of a High Speed Serial Card > to make a FreeBSD box a router or something. well.. out of LINT: # rc: RISCom/8 multiport card so... it does look like they make a multiport card.. but they do also have a sync card which has a driver in FreeBSD... > > I run a mini terminal server (it's even diskless) and it's a 486/33dx > > w/ a couple AST compatible boards... works great... I've hacked mgetty > > to pieces to support various functions... but as Danny said.. the > > default getty now supports autoppp detection... > > That's good to know, how much did a box like hat cost you? well.. a friend found a place that was unloading those 4port AST cards for $39 each... so I bought a couple of those... the ethernet card in it I picked up from a swap meet for probably $1.. (it's 16bbit NE2000, you can't complain)... and I paid something like $19 for the 3.5" floppy... the CPU on the machine was another swap meet grab... $10 for it... I already had the MB... so.. as you can see most of it isn't new stuff... just stuff I had laying around... I use the floppy to boot because i haven't been able to find anyone that has an EPROM burner to burn me a couple boot roms... so it has only cost me about $110... but if you add in the wiring that I've done to make handling sll the serial ports nice... your talking about an additional $80... but that's because I set it up in such a way that I can easily pull a modem from my terminal server and attach it to another box... (just unplug on RJ-45 plug and plug it into another slot, it done :) )... > > hope it goes well... I've thought about starting a local isp too... one > > that actually provides good service to the more enlighted *grin*... but > > startup capital is my problem... > > How much startup capital are we talking about? I can see you're > in Oregon so competition shouldn't be that bad there. well... most of it would go for the inital inet connection and telco cost... depending on what my start up size is... it's around $5,000... and most of that is modems/phone lines or inet connectivity... yeh.. it's not that bad.. and from what I hear it could actually have a good chance of surviving just because of the number of people that are signing up... ttyl... -- John-Mark Cu Networking Modem/FAX: +1 541 683 6954 Live in Peace, destroy Micro$oft, support free software, run FreeBSD
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