That generation of ZyWALLs are ARM based, so there's no chance of running pfSense on them. At some point in the future, FreeBSD on ARM may mature enough to use this sort of hardware, but these boxes are pretty small and limited by modern standards (they were launched in 2005, if I remember correctly).

More likely to work under 2.1.
Not listed in the u3g source though: http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/release/8.3.0/sys/dev/usb/serial/u3g.c?revision=234063&view=markup

Steve

Curious if you noticed much difference with the P3 1.4 CPU upgrade. I fried my original C1200 so I've got a P3-866 in mine but its workload is very small.

Cheers,
Dave

Nice.  :)
That also implies the packet driver might work with the 633.

Steve

@raysantana:

Yes, the NIC is on-board.  How do i disable it?

Go to the bios setup at boot, and disable it from there.  Then put a piece of tape over the port so you (or your successor) don't forget about it and try to use it … not that I know from experience or anything  ;)

I Agree, but bad RAM does make this boxes do funny things. Just look at my last posting on pfsense on x550e.
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,20095.900.html

I read somewhere that serial ports should be disable in this computer.

I have one and I know it works with 2.1, but my serial ports were disable way before trying pfsense on it.

I agree that updating the hardware guidance would be pretty helpful.  Otherwise, users would have to sift through the forums where there may be conflicting opinions.

The Atom CPU I mentioned before is this one:
Intel Atom C2750 Intel ARK Link
It's a 2.4GHz octa-core CPU @ 20W TDP which supports hardware AES, VT-x, and 64GB ECC

Here's an interesting board that is about to be released which uses the CPU:
Supermicro A1SAi-2750F Supermicro Link
Unfortunately it doesn't have a mSATA slot, but it has an onboard USB header that you could install a Flash DOM/Flash drive on.  My only concern is it uses the Marvell 88E1543 chipset which I can't find any concrete info for pfSense 2.1 support, though previous similar Marvell LAN chipsets apparently had had problems with 2.0.x.

For the i3, I saw the i3-4330T:
Intel i3-4330T Intel ARK Link
It's a 3.0Ghz dual-core with HyperThreading CPU @ 35W TDP which supports hardware AES, VT-x, and 32GB ECC

There don't seem to be many interesting LGA 1150 mITX boards, and I couldn't find any by Supermicro or ASUS.  I did find a few from ASRock and Jetway though:

ASRock IMB-181-D ASRock Link
ASRock IMB-182 ASRock Link
Jetway NF9J-Q87 Jetway Link

Both have some niceties, such as the mSATA slots (but no USB header for Flash DOMs).  The bad points I guess is much less total RAM capacity support (16GB), no ECC option, and only dual LAN based on the Intel i210 + Intel i217LM for ASRock and the Intel i211AT + Intel i217LM for Jetway.

The perfect scenario would be either the Atom or i3 in mITX form factor, but also have 4 NICs either built in, or through a daughterboard like my current Jetway Atom D525 board.  I think I can cope with 3 NICs at the minimum.  Normally I'd say "screw this" and just use a separate 2-4 port Intel NIC on PCIe, but then that forces me to use bigger cases.  I'd like to use as small as a case as possible since it's nice to have a small mITX sized "appliance" instead of a bigger cube box or a 1U rack (if I went rack I'd just use a mATX board anyways).

Edit: here's a review by ServeTheHome for the Intel Atom C2750 on the Supermicro board: ServeTheHome Review.  Apparently the new Atoms are based on a "new" OOO architecture that is much more efficient and puts it basically on-part with the lower clocked i3's in multi-threaded applications.  The older Atoms like the D525 are based on an in-order architecture which was pretty slow.

I see :) Thanks.

yeah I will probably invest in a UPS quite soon

the weird thing is this is nothing to do with the Hypervisor state though

like if i just manually log into the ESXi console shutdown/halt the pfSense VM (properly using VMware tools)
start it up from a state of being off the same issue occurs again
i always need another reboot  of the VM to get connectivity

it also often occurs in twos e.g. if i reboot again connectivity is lost but it always comes back the second time

i was using NC360T NICs previously in this same system in the same configuration and experience no such issue which is why I'm thinking it's the igb driver

i had to replace the nc360s because they were highly unstable no matter if they were in passthrough mode or not, which i think was a motherboard/chipset issue, under any kind of load the entire system hypervisor and all would just lock up, but there was never any issue with initial connection

Just because you can is reason enough IMHO.  ;)

Steve

I think you know what you are talking about stephenw10.  I could jump on and correct the setup using your outline via teamviewer, but I was sort of thinking someone else might enjoy the experience.  I don't see a reason why this won't work.  If no one else gets into it in a day or so, I'll have free time for that by then.

Alright thanks Steve for your help.

Any old hardware will work for basic simple routing. Go for a cheap Atom all in one mini box which has atleast 2 NICs .. with 1 NIC you would need VLANs.

The older single core Atoms are now dirt cheap and will serve your purpose for a long time.

@stephenw10:

RAM is cheap, get lots.  ;)
If you're planning to run Snort then 2GB or more would probably be recommended. The standard pfSense install doesn't require much, it will run in 256MB.

NIC manufacturer in approximate order of preference are (IMHO):
Intel
Broadcom
Everything else
Realtek

Newer Realtek NICs are a lot better though. A lot of people won't touch them after being burned by their older 10/100 NICs
I can't recommend a multiport NIC personally.

Steve

Thanks Steve, good advice. I'll probably end up going for one of the PCIe Intel NICs on the FreeBSD HCL, if there's no material difference between them all…

@charlie0440:

A quick swap and its been plodding along nicely although a little noisy.

To make it MUCH quieter, see HERE.

Steve

I had to literally tear apart the connector housing for the PS2 port, but as it was $5, and basically only being used for this, I didn't see an issue.

But I got it working! Got into the BIOS, configured the CF card, and booted.

stephenw10, thank you for all your help! It is definitely appreciated!

And specifically the ps2 header I got was this one:
http://www.pccables.com/06010.html

And in case anyone else needs it,
pin 1: green,
pin 2: brown,
pin 4: red,
pin 8: yellow,

At least, for the cable I got, that's what worked.

@stan-qaz:

I'm not very impressed by this but it is a tiny computer with an Intel processor that you might be able to get pfSense running on instead of waiting on an ARM port.

http://linuxgizmos.com/intel-launches-arduino-compatible-galileo-board/

http://www.intel.com/support/galileo/index.htm

If it's combatting the arduino, it's not going to be very powerful. comparable to the ARM m# series IP.
in comparison, routers are usually based on A# series IP