On Wed, 25 May 2005 11:33, Martin Baehr wrote: > On Wed, May 25, 2005 at 11:01:28AM +1200, Christopher Sawtell wrote: > > > > And blowing a couple hundred dollars on something that needs the > > > > warranty voided to do what is needed, isn�t really that useful. > > > > > > i expect that it is still cheaper than any other hardware for the same > > > purpose. who cares about warranty at that price? > > > > Money doesn't grow on trees in NZ like it does in Europe. > > huh? > wrt54g: $150 > cheapest mainboard: $56 + cheapest cpu: $83 �> $139 + assorted extra costs. > a multiport card i could not even find to buy. 1 x IBM PS/1 '486 $50 2 x 3Com ethernet cards $10 2 x 16 megs memory SIMMs $?? -- out of 'bits' drawer.
> so if you buy stuff to build a router, you can't beat the price of the > wrt54g. if you build it from used parts you don't get warranty. If you use good quality s/h parts you will not regret it. Pre-owned Rolls-Royce / Mercedes / Volvo or what have you, versus an unknown Kamakusea from the Far East. Well, to my way of thinking the choice is obvious. The same notion applies to computers. > the point i am trying to make here is that there are a lot of hidden > costs and issues that you need to take in consideration that make a > device like the wrt54g very attractive. To my mind the fact that you can upgrade and adjust the code if necessary in a home-built gate-way is _the_ feature which surpasses all others. > > > maintaining a self built machine also costs a lot of time. > > > > Eh? I got an old IBM PS/1 25MHz '486 about 3 years ago as a firewall. > > Put more memory in it, then IPCop on it, and it's gone continuously ever > > since. I have kept the IPCop s/w more or less up to date. 3 or 4 X 20 > > minutes or so for updates is not a lot of time over several years. > > then you got lucky. > the hardware i got failed when we had a poweroutage. My dear old IBM PS/1 survived last night's power cut, absolutely not a bleat. Not even a re-boot :-) > and i was not around to fix it. result was months of downtime for that > machine and the network behind it. > we recently had another powercrash and the machine failed again. i am > looking at a few more months of downtime until i can go there to fix it. > fortunately by now the router is said wrt54g and the machine is just > server. the network behind it is still reachable. > in the meantime i am looking for a piece of hardware that is actually > reliable (such as the cobalt qube, it survived the poweroutage without > even rebooting (despite lack of a ups, show me a pc that can do that)) A Lot of problems with computers, and other electronics for that matter, are caused by insufficient mains power line filtering and protection, especially if you are on the end of a long supply line in an industrial area. > i too, try to do this cheaply, but the investment in the wrt54g already > paid off. I'm glad for you. -- C. S.
