Well, as anyone who was around for the net on Monday Night knows, it is always fun and interesting when the band plays in our favor! We would like to acknowledge Kevin, KA0I, who checked in with us from Holts Summit, MO just north of Jefferson City. Quite a jump in to the repeater!
73
James
KC0TQD
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Monday, August 4, 2008
Uses for that older computer...
As some have said, you don't own technology, you just rent it. Time marches on and as it does, we tend to collect items that have outlived their usefulness. I have several older computers that I have collected. I have gone though all of them and they are all in good working order, but are not well-suited to run current versions of Windows. Even the popular desktop versions of Linux are a bit of a stretch on these older machines. However, there are several things that can be done with your older hardware. These are projects not much different from anything you'd do with ham radio only these are computer-centered. I've been doing computer projects much much longer than I have been doing ham projects, so I thought I'd share a couple of them.
Use #1: Build a router/firewall.
Why do this when most everyone with broadband has a small, inexpensive little box that serves that function. Well... much like in ham radio, why take the time to do it yourself when you can buy it ready made? We do it to learn and to get the thrill of using something we made. This is the same thing. You can purhcase routers for cheap, but building one out of an old computer is fun and you will learn a bit in the process.
Use #2: Build a home NAS server
First, what is NAS. NAS = Network Attached Storage. Disk space that is attached directly to a network without the overhead of Windows running. Another benefit of using an OS other than Windows is you can get away from some of Windows limitations. For instance. The computer I am using does not fully recogize larger (larger than 80GB) hard drives. I have a 160GB drive and FreeBSD is able to use the full drive where Windows would not be able to without help. I have it setup to hold the data and downloads I have collected over the years.
Something worth mentioning about both of these solutions is that once they are setup and running there is no need to have a keyboard or monitor connected to them. (a mouse is not needed for either one as they are both configured from a non-graphical interface). I have both of these in a closet under a table and they just sit there an run pretty much out of sight. I can finally get some use out of my older hardware that was just sitting around.
If time permits, I'll try to post more detail on what I did to set these up and get them going.
The firewall / router distribution is called IPCop and can be found here:
http://www.ipcop.org
The NAS distribution is called FreeNAS and can be found here:
http://www.freenas.org
-Jeff / KCØVGC
Use #1: Build a router/firewall.
Why do this when most everyone with broadband has a small, inexpensive little box that serves that function. Well... much like in ham radio, why take the time to do it yourself when you can buy it ready made? We do it to learn and to get the thrill of using something we made. This is the same thing. You can purhcase routers for cheap, but building one out of an old computer is fun and you will learn a bit in the process.
Use #2: Build a home NAS server
First, what is NAS. NAS = Network Attached Storage. Disk space that is attached directly to a network without the overhead of Windows running. Another benefit of using an OS other than Windows is you can get away from some of Windows limitations. For instance. The computer I am using does not fully recogize larger (larger than 80GB) hard drives. I have a 160GB drive and FreeBSD is able to use the full drive where Windows would not be able to without help. I have it setup to hold the data and downloads I have collected over the years.
Something worth mentioning about both of these solutions is that once they are setup and running there is no need to have a keyboard or monitor connected to them. (a mouse is not needed for either one as they are both configured from a non-graphical interface). I have both of these in a closet under a table and they just sit there an run pretty much out of sight. I can finally get some use out of my older hardware that was just sitting around.
If time permits, I'll try to post more detail on what I did to set these up and get them going.
The firewall / router distribution is called IPCop and can be found here:
http://www.ipcop.org
The NAS distribution is called FreeNAS and can be found here:
http://www.freenas.org
-Jeff / KCØVGC
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