If it weren’t for bad luck

If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all. First, one of the NIC’s in my firewall goes bad. I got that replaced and it’s been running fine. This morning, the hard drive went out. The drive won’t even spin up. I need to find a replacement soon so that I can get pfSense going again.

I hope to find a replacement drive for cheap. It will have to be a 2.5″ (laptop) hard drive. It doesn’t have to be large because pfSense doesn’t take up much space and I set Squid to use a maximum of 100 MB. NewEgg has a 40 GB, 5400 RPM drive with 8 MB of cache for $45. That’s a lot better than the 20 GB, 4200 RPM drive currently sitting in the firewall (not counting the dead part).

It is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath. - Aeschylus

06.May.07 Hardware Comments (4)

Office move and new keyboard/mouse

I had to move to another office today. It wasn’t really a downgrade or an upgrade. Think of it more as a lateral move in the company. I also got a new keyboard and mouse for my workstation as part of the move.

The keyboard/mouse combo is the Logitech Bluetooth Desktop MX 5000 Laser. The MX 5000 keyboard is freakin’ sweet. It has touch controls on the left for volume, media player and zooming. The keyboard also has an LCD screen at the top that shows date, time, temp and some application data (song title/time, email notification, etc.). The keys are very quite which helps when you’re close to others and you type a lot.

The rechargeable mouse is the MX 1000 laser mouse, 800-dpi and 5MP processing, with a tilt wheel and a couple of thumb buttons. A docking station for the mouse comes with the setup. It took about an hour to fully charge the first time I docked it. The 3-bar power meter is a nice touch. The Logitech site states that the power meter is on the keyboard and mouse but it’s not. Instead, I have to check the power level for the keyboard using the Logitech program.

Logitech Bluetooth Desktop MX5000 Laser

Newegg.com has the combo for $91 after a $20 rebate. Now if only I could get another 30″ LCD…….

He who trims himself to suit everyone will soon whittle himself away. - Raymond Hull

27.Apr.07 Hardware Comments (0)

Surfing with DSL

My DSL modem arrived the other day. According to the BellSouth tech that attached my phone line, I had a perfect signal for the 6 Mb service. He wasn’t kidding. I’m actually getting speed test results of 6.5 Mb.

There is one problem with the setup. I have the single computer Westell modem. I requested that one instead of the home networking model (4 port, wireless). The problem comes into play when I set the DSL modem to bridge mode and connect it to the router (Linksys BEFSX41). My download speed drops to 3.2 Mb consistently. The upload speed is still around 512 Kb.

I tried resetting the Linksys router to factory default but that didn’t help. I also tried setting the DSL modem back to PPPoE and enabling IP Passthrough to the router. It still would top out at 3.2 Mb. That is weird because the router has a throughput rating of over 30 Mb.

For now, I have the DSL modem in PPPoE mode connected to a 5-port Netgear 10/100 switch. Everything is just running to the switch until I can find out why the router cuts the download speed.

One of the problems I have with using the DSL modem’s built in routing feature is the port forwarding. You have to setup a NAT service for each forwarded port or range. That’s fine but when you enable the service a pop-up with two buttons, OK and Cancel, comes up. If you hit OK, that allows you to set an incoming NAT. If you hit Cancel, that only sets up an outgoing NAT. Why not just mark the buttons Incoming and Outgoing? Better yet, why not just have a separate page for incoming/outgoing NATs?

Minor things aside, the service is working great. I’m now just waiting on Dish Network to show up and I can cancel all my Charter services.

A wise man learns by the mistakes of others, a fool by his own. - Latin Proverb

07.Mar.07 Hardware, Internet Comments (3)

New workstation

I got a workstation upgrade. I had my old workstation, a Dell Precision 380, for about a year and a half. It was a nice machine but the new one blows it away.

The workstation is a Dell Precision 490 Mini-Tower. Here are the specs:

I kept my 30″ Dell Widescreen. The system is running Windows XP Pro. We don’t have any intentions of upgrading to Windows Vista any time soon because XP works just fine.

This thing screams! I’m in the process of reinstalling all my software. That will take a little time.

We judge others by their behavior. We judge ourselves by our intentions. - Ian Percy

05.Feb.07 Hardware Comments (2)

SilenX fans really are quiet

The fan I wrote about a week ago, the one that was showing delivered but wasn’t, showed up a couple of days later. It’s a SilenX 40mm case fan that was to replace a really loud existing fan in my firewall PC. The fan is rated at 14 dB, spinning at 3500 RPM and pushing 5 CFM. I was a little leery about the noise claim because I’ve used “quiet” fans before that weren’t really quiet.

The fan came packaged with regular case screws as well as rubber pull screws. I used the rubber screws for an added level of silence (in case of vibration). Plus, the black color matches the case better than the silver screws.

I was surprised how quiet the fan really is. I thought I would at least hear a little noise but there isn’t any if I’m more than 6 inches away. Close up, all you hear is the sound of the air flow. I will definitely purchase more fans made by SilenX.

The only noise from the firewall now is from the CPU fan. I can’t find any replacement socket 370 low-profile heatsink/fans that are rated quieter than 30 dB. That’s about what the installed fan is putting out. I may just line the top of the case with noise dampening material from FrozenCPU.com.

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. - Lao Tzu

31.Jan.07 Hardware Comments (0)

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