On Sun, Mar 23, 2008 at 04:13:45PM +0200, Lars Noodin wrote: > sonjaya wrote: > > any other device sugesstion? > > If you do not need the wireless card (see item 'J' in the diagram), > *maybe* that could be replaced with an ethernet card: > http://www.macworld.com/article/49653/2006/03/minicsi.html > > But then there would be the problem of the cable moving around or coming > loose inside, and where the cable should come out of the case. > Old-ish (I'm thinking ThinkPad A2*) laptops usually have a suitable miniPCI network card and a ribbon cable to connect to it, which will surely fit through some hole in the case. The RJ45 connector will sometimes be easily removable from the laptop case so it might not be too hard to use, in other cases the ribbon connects to the mainboard and you'd need to solder. At least my A21p seems to be of the former type, and those failed pretty often so you might be able to find one.
I'd just go with USB ethernet, a soekris / mini-itx board or a cheap, nasty "manageable" switch with vlans (they are surprisingly common - even a series of ADSL modems common in Finland have VLAN capable integrated switches, neatly allowing you to have the internal wireless LAN in a separate VLAN firewalled with an OpenBSD router.) -- Jussi Peltola
