[rescue] analog routers...

[Robert Novak]

On Sun, 24 Aug 2003, Shannon wrote:

> On Fri, Aug 22, 2003 at 09:49:02PM -0700, Robert Novak wrote:
>
> > The comment about needing graphics to use a PC was silly, by the way. (My
> > old dialup router/firewall/server never needed graphics--good thing with a
> > 9" vga display, in fact.)
>
> The only thing silly about it, is the fact that PCs have this limitation in
> the first place.
>
> You still had to use graphics for the install, and you have to use it
> any time you either cannot have serial console support, or the console
> support fails for some reason.

There's a difference between "a monitor" and "graphics." Unless you're
using Windows, of course. Redhat, SuSE, Debian, OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD,
Solaris can all install from a text console. Or at least the last time I
installed any of them, they did, because I did. Even if I have a 21" high
resolution monitor, I usually don't have a mouse on a UNIX machine.

You could even look at some PC104 stuff if you want the convenience of the
PC architecture for sw/hw support, and with the industrial serial console
sort of thing.

Or you could buy my spare SPARCclassic. :)

> > Almost as silly as suggesting a PC-based router
> > when you want something appliancelike for the purpose.
>
> I don't really want anything appliance-like, I just want something
> small that works good, and I don't want a PC.

You do want something appliance-like, then. Something you can plug in and
forget, or at least not have to tweak and hack on. Unless you really want
to hack and tweak on a sun or alpha or mips box.

> Ideally Sun would have made decent serial ports, and I'd not need a
> thing.

I've heard good things about the BSD and Linux serial drivers on even
Sun4c stuff. Maybe you can tweak a HSSI card to do RS232, if you really
need more performance than 115k line rate.

--Rob
-- 
Robert Novak - rnovak at indyramp.com