[TriLUG] dead motherboard

[Jason Tower]

check out the bona light system on these pages:

http://mini-itx.com/hardware.asp
http://www.lex.com.tw/case-light.htm

i don't think there is anything smaller than micro-atx for socket a, and
none of them have dual ethernet.  assuming you're wanting to make a custom
case with low power/noise characteristics, the mini-itx form factor looks
tough to beat.  i'm planning on playing around with it soon as i get my
hands on a unit.

as for the firewall idea, check out devil linux:

http://devil-linux.org/

jason

> Well, I finally got around to putting my second Linux box together (AMD
> 1.9 Ghz, 500 meg ram, fast FSB, blah, blah).  Anyway, the motherboard
> is dead which, I'm assuming, is due to static (it's been sitting around
> for months and moved around (albeit in a static bag) many, many times).
>   Anyway, so I have the chip and RAM.
>
> I have two options and I"m curious for feedback.
>
> Option one is fairly simple.
>
> Take chip, get AS SMALL AS POSSIBLE board with two 10/100 interfaces,
> built-in graphics, 2 USB, one serial, and that's about it.  I want to
> use my fast RAM if all possible.  I'm talking about as tiny of a board
> as I can find.  Does anyone know of a super-small board which will
> accomadate AMD chips?  I want to use only the ports built into the
> board and I'm not interested in running any cards.  I know of some mini
> boards that take Intel chips, but I don't know of any that take AMD
> with built-in graphics and dual 10/100 ports.  Anyone know of anything
> like this?  A 1U board and case would be okay, but I'm looking for
> REALLY, REALLY small to make a custom case for.
>
> The second option is more interesting.
>
> How about creating a diskless station to boot off CD (also replacing
> the bios with LinuxBIOS) to use as my firewall.  The theory that I had
> would be that if the OS is burned to CD and loaded into RAM at boot
> then it would be harder to hack.  A hacker could gain access and
> possible change some configurations but once it's rebooted from ROM and
> the LinuxBIOS it should return back to it's original config.   I'm not
> interested in running a web server but if I were I suppose I could
> change the iptables file, burn a new CD and reboot and VOLIA - port 80
> would be open and forwarded to my other machine.
>
> Is a configuration like this possible?  Is it not a good idea?  Or just
> a stupid idea for some reason that I'm not seeing in my sleepy fog?
>
> Greg
>
> _______________________________________________
> TriLUG mailing list
>     http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
> TriLUG Organizational FAQ:
>     http://www.trilug.org/~lovelace/faq/TriLUG-faq.html


------------------------
Jason Tower
Cerient Technologies
jason at cerient.net