[plug] that Netway Computers board...

[Bernard Blackham]

On Wed, Aug 27, 2003 at 10:30:12PM +0800, Denis Brown wrote:
> A few threads ago someone mentioned a single board PC that Netway
> Computers (??) were selling.  I may have been volunteered to steer my
> son's parent-run preschool (read "limited funds") through the computing
> maze and they want ADSL.   A collection of about five PCs at present but
> no pretence to security, etc.   Mixture of OS's (Win of course.)

Eeek.

> I'm thinking to suggest one of these (plus PS of course) to isolate the
> tender inside world from the cruel outside world, provide NATting, etc,
> etc.   Any ideas if it can be run headless - stick the box in a cupboard
> somewhere out of harm's way...?   Will try to contact Netway tomorrow for
> more info but maybe someone's already had a rough look-see.

Yep, works fine headless & keyboardless. Comes in a stainless steel
case too! The main hurdle you'll have to cross is that it only has
one ethernet port, so the options for ADSL are:

 - find a USB adsl modem supported under linux
 - find a USB ethernet adapter supported under linux
 - find a PC/104 Ethernet card (others might know more about this)
 - find/create a PC/104 -> ISA adapter and use an ISA ethernet card
   (cheap as chips)

You also probably want to do the installation on a different machine
(they're not the gruntiest things around). But further to that
you'll either need a laptop to put the laptop HDD into, or a
suitable converter cable ($15 from Netway) to do the installation.

HTH,

Bernard.

-- 
 Bernard Blackham 
 bernard at blackham dot com dot au