Wayne (and LDS)
Well, as Bob brought up, if it's a PCI card, make sure that 486 motherboard has a PCI
slot. I agree with Seth as well, $85 is a good price to sell a 486 for, but not
necessarily a good buying price.
I'd recommend getting the exact model number of the 3com nic, and verifying that it is
supported (or at least works) under linux.
You can use Mandrake as your firewall. However, there are things mandrake has in it
that will be unnecessary on your 486 box. Such as printing, X, cd burning, sound, mp3
players, netscape, and more. The suggestion for those linksys nat/routers are also
good, if you don't want to put in the work to setup your own system.
Of course, since you already HAVE a current desktop running linux, a laptop and
[miscelaneous family computers], you could just add in a few things to your current
desktop and make it your firewall, without spending ANY money or making ANY hardware
configuration changes:
Plug everything in to your hub, and configure them on a private lan (10.x, 192.168.x,
etc. The internet won't be able to reach your computers).
Recompile the kernel (mandrake's ok too), with Ip aliasing and masquerading support.
As kbob suggested, read the Firewall/IP Masquerade/Kernel howtos.
Configure your nic with two ip addresses, public and private
Get an rc.firewall script, and setup your ipchains to route between them.
Voila. Physically, it doesn't make much sense, basically having a star configuration
with a hub in the center. Logically it makes perfect sense. Private computers can't
talk to the internet. The only computer that is recognized by the university is the
one with the public IP. The public IP guy masquerades all the others.
Physically it's a star,
/-->desktop 10.x.1 & real2.ip
real.ip /-/
Int<---->Hub<---->laptop 10.x.2
\----->computer 10.x.3
but logically its a linear net:
real.ip real2.ip
Int<----->GW<---->Lan
10.x.1 10.x.2,3,4
Cory
On Wed, Nov 29, 2000 at 10:05:01PM -0600, Dragon Singer wrote:
> Hi guys, I'm sorry I wasn't more Specific about which University I was
> talking about.. I am attending Western Illinois University in Macomb
> Illinois. The University is phasing ethernet connections into all of
> it's Housing. The NIC the gentleman is offering is a USR/3Com 10/100
> card. Looks like a pci card, but I can't tell by looking as I'm 95%
> blind- that's why I have a Leader Dog.. LOL LOL I have a 4 port netgear
> (or maybe it's linksys) hub and a NIC in my curren desktop and a pcmcia
> NIC for my laptop.
>
>
> I don't have Debian, have never worked with Debian. I was
> hoping I'd be able to use the Mandrake 7.2 distro in a modified form.
>
>
>
>
> Sincerely and Respectfully Yours
>
> Wayne & Leader Dog Sequoia
>
> N9PSR FISTS #4409
> icq# 315313
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
