Just got Thinkpad R31…..
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Just bought an R31 (PIII 1.13ghz/256mb ram 110 bux shipped!) to run Pfsense with the understanding that it supports PCMCIA cards. It's got an intel integrated 10/100 NIC which I didn't check but should be good to go lol.
I was wondering if anyone could point out a good PCMCIA ethernet card available today that is known to work great with pfsense etc.
Thanks.
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Zep:
PCMCIA - Xercom working - xe0 will show up…
I did not do a lot of testing however I use this card to just build 2.5 hard drives in a Thinkpad r51 with the xercom card...
Then I move them to Watchguard hardware.....
Xercom cards are cheap but I am not sure about watchguard timeouts...
(why don't you use something different? Small even - Check out the ALIX kits for under $200.00 us?
Currently running x700 Watchguard...H.
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Zep:
PCMCIA - Xercom working - xe0 will show up…
I did not do a lot of testing however I use this card to just build 2.5 hard drives in a Thinkpad r51 with the xercom card...
Then I move them to Watchguard hardware.....
Xercom cards are cheap but I am not sure about watchguard timeouts...
(why don't you use something different? Small even - Check out the ALIX kits for under $200.00 us?
Currently running x700 Watchguard...H.
I ended up getting:
3COM OFFICECONNECT 10/100 LAN PC CARD 3CCSH572BToff of ebay for 12 bucks, based off the FreeBSD HCL.
I got the Thinkpad because i want a kb, mouse, monitor, battery, and low power all rolled up into one package….that and I love Thinkpads and i think its great to put an old one to use like that lol....and this one was cheap!!
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Just got the R31 in today, looks like it was never used. Check power draw at the wall, 14.4 watts with the screen off!
Have been running pfsense on a Thinkpad T43 and it's been running great!
My only question is that will using the config backup be ok for moving to a new machine?
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Another option would have been, using a smart switch and vlans. This what I did with my Thinkpad T23 with Netgear GS108T switch. Witch has worked great, can read more about that here:
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,28379.0.html -
That's pretty interesting.
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I actually ran into some weird thing where a certain NIC was preventing RRD Graphs from running…so it seems. I actually have 3 different nics, 2 of them were sold together and are double deckers that don't use a dongle (as their are big enough for have the jack built in).
Trying to swap to the R31 today, I tried to use this 3Comm 3C3FE574BT double decker nic instead of this other 3com nic i had in the T43. I couldn't use it in the 3C3FE574BT T43 because there is a metal splitter in between the two slots.
Anyways setup went fine and everything was working right except RRD Graphs which was from some reason not working, and I mean not even the System graph was working with "nan" in the text statistics. I thought something got screwed up when i loaded the config file that I saved so i reinstalled pfsense and just got to the point where i could login and take a peak at RRD Graphs which still appeared to not be working.
I ended up doing a fresh install but this time with the NIC i used in the T43 and they seem to be working again. I ended up reinstalling because i tried to swap interface roles and pfsense appeared to do it, but they never actually swapped for some reason.
I guess i'm going to mess around a little more. I have that other double decker which is slightly different (3C3SH573BT) and will give that a try.
EDIT: The 3C3SH573BT works like a charm.
EDIT: The 3C3SH573BT does not work like a charm, i'm getting watchdog timeouts with it. Need to find another brand.
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For my pfsense I'm using an acer 3000 laptop, To get my second nic I opted to go with an mini-pci nic. I found mine in the bin at my local computer shop but, ebay has several intel modem/nic combo cards for next to nothing.
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Yea, i've been thinking about looking at intel NICs since the integrated ones are Intel and work fine.
EDIT: I went back to that 3COM OFFICECONNECT 10/100 LAN PC CARD 3CCSH572BT with the dongle, 1day 22hrs uptime, 16.2GB and only 3 errors so far on the NIC. The thinkpad is running great, so I think I'll just stick to this.