ALIX 2c2 advice needed

Slam

Hello im able to get a few used 2c2's at a nice price, as Ive never used any pc engines stuff, I was hoping if someone could tell me their experience with them.

I want to replace my ageing linksys wrt54g's, which are running ddwrt in wds mode, I have pfsense as my firewall with captive portal enabled on an interface attached to the master wds…which then repeats the signal to 8 wrt54's in client wds mode, my plan is to either install ddwrt on the c2c or perhaps pfsense and use adhoc mode instead w/routing?!.

basically, is it worth buying if theyre cheap, as I know they are discontinued now.

cheers

Slam

GruensFroeschli

The successor of the 2c2 is the 2d2.
These are the changes from 2c2 to 2d2:

@http://pcengines.ch/alix2d2.htm:

•Increase USB current limit.
• USB headers as build option.
• USB ports 3 and 4 on header (not tested).
• Change optional serial header J12 to COM2.
• Add LED and switch pins to I2C header.
• Populate buzzer driver circuit, add pins for use as GPIO.
• Add option for power in header J18.
• Some enhancements to reduce EMI.
• Add second POSCAP to ruggedize 3.3V rail for high power radio cards.

Are you affected by any of these changes?

I have several of the 2c2 in use and never had any problems with them.
If you can get them cheap i would go for it.

Slam

No I dont need those except I dont know what this means "Add second POSCAP to ruggedize 3.3V rail for high power radio cards".

Ive tried googling for this but cant find what it is, I plan to put 2 radios in the 2c2's one 2.4ghz and one 5ghz, would the above affect me?

if not then ill go ahead and order 2 for test lab.

thanks

Seth

I believe you'll loose WDS with pfSense.

–Seth

dotdash

The change was needed for the Alix to be able to handle certain high-power radios. I'm not sure exactly how powerful a radio would cause problems- >200mW? >500mW?
Here is a post from when this fix first came out: http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,8877.0.html

Slam

Thanks a lot guys, I think Ill just order a pair.

Seth: Ya I know, no wds support in fbsd, but Im going to play around and see if I can achieve similar thing in pfsense, possibly <5GHZ>radio:a -WAN> <lan -="" radio:b<2.4ghz="">then bridge lan 2 wan, I think Ive seen someone post something here about doing it this way.

Cheers

Slam</lan>

Slam

Ive been told they dont come with DB9 serial port, but if i solder on, it should work ok,

thanks dotdash, ill look in to that further.

cheers guys

dotdash

@Slam:

Ive been told they dont come with DB9 serial port, but if i solder on, it should work ok,

What? Unless they were a custom run with the serial port specifically deleted, there should be a serial port. http://www.pcengines.ch/alix2c2.htm

Slam

Yeah, they come in these cases with only one usb port showing and 2x lan, heres the pic of the board itself, db9 missing.

slam

Seth

Thought you may be interested in the following unit
http://www.engeniustech.com/datacom/products/details.aspx?id=244

NetGate
http://www.netgate.com/product_info.php?cPath=32&products_id=712

Cheaper vendor
http://www.microcom.us/eap3660.html

Slam

Thanks Seth, Ill check them out further, I noticed the EOR7550, very nice peice of kit and ideal with 2 radios.

Cheers

Slam

Well I ended up getting 3 of these, m0n0 and ddwrt boot up fine, I installed pf 2.0 on a spare pc, backed up config.xml, edited interfaces to relate to the alix's (vr0 & vr1) then i fed it back in the spare machine with the restore function, it rebooted and I powered off the computer when it was doing POST, swapped over the cf card to the alix and….didnt work :D

I must of missed something but Ill give it a go again later, as a last resort Ill buy a db9 port!

By the way, the person I bought this off has a shit load of old WRAP's that he's selling for peanuts, but even more alix c2c's

dotdash

Try a newer 1.2.3 embedded snapshot, the default interfaces changed to vr0 and vr1 a while back.

Slam

Thanks for the heads up, Ill give the new 1.2.3 nanobsd go.

Slam

dotdash

I've just been using the stock embedded ones so far. http://snapshots.pfsense.org/FreeBSD_RELENG_7_2/pfSense_RELENG_1_2/embedded/

Slam

Thanks for the link, the latest snapshot (pfSense-1.2.3-20090615-1722.img.gz) worked great for me.

Ill eventually have to get a serial port attached for bios updates, but atleast I can play with it for the time being!

Cheers

Slam