ALIX 2c2 advice needed
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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
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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. -
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
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I believe you'll loose WDS with pfSense.
–Seth
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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 -
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>
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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
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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
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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
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Thought you may be interested in the following unit
http://www.engeniustech.com/datacom/products/details.aspx?id=244NetGate
http://www.netgate.com/product_info.php?cPath=32&products_id=712Cheaper vendor
http://www.microcom.us/eap3660.html -
Thanks Seth, Ill check them out further, I noticed the EOR7550, very nice peice of kit and ideal with 2 radios.
Cheers
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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
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Try a newer 1.2.3 embedded snapshot, the default interfaces changed to vr0 and vr1 a while back.
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Thanks for the heads up, Ill give the new 1.2.3 nanobsd go.
Slam
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I've just been using the stock embedded ones so far. http://snapshots.pfsense.org/FreeBSD_RELENG_7_2/pfSense_RELENG_1_2/embedded/
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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