[TriLUG] Hardware recommendations (IDE CDROM, Zip disk, firewall)

[Tom Bryan]

I'm still putting some finishing touches on one of my Linux boxes, and I was 
wondering if anyone had any good/bad hardware advice.

1) IDE CDROM
The box has a SCSI CDRW, but it doesn't have a CDROM.  I just need something 
for software installs, music listening, an occasional CD copying (a 
Windows-only coworker finally took the plunge and installed Linux on an old 
laptop).  The CDRW is very noisy, and I was hoping to get a quite IDE CDROM 
with decent speed.

2) Zip disk
My wife would like to have a Zip drive for immediate backups (I'll probably 
script some rsyncing to the thing) and large file sharing.  My development 
machine has a SCSI card, but I see that Iomega also makes a USB zip drive.  
Has anyone tried either or both?  I liked the SCSI idea, but with an external 
USB device, I may actually be able to use the thing on other computers (at 
work, my parents' machine, etc.)  

3) firewall
I signed up with RoadRunner.  It should be installed next week.  I have a 
fileserver/e-mail box (Pentium) and my main development box (Athalon).  Right 
now, I'm using IP Masquerading through the fileserver to get connectivity to 
the rest of the house.  Even with a good ipchains ruleset (which I probably 
don't have yet), I don't really want to make my fileserver a firewall for a 
broadband connection.  I was thinking about getting a little firewall device, 
but I don't know anything about them.  Are these things worth the price?  I'd 
still try to maintain a good firewall on the fileserver: I just don't want a 
machine running NFS, apache, etc. to be my first line of defense. :)

---Tom