Thanasis posted on Sat, 14 Mar 2015 15:09:28 +0200 as excerpted: > On 03/14/2015 01:43 PM, Duncan wrote: >> ... And there's the single 16x PCIE slot @ 4x speed, perfect for the >> quad-port Ethernet card. > > http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-634025-001-629133-001-Ethernet-1-GB-4- PORT-331FLR-Adapter-HSTNS-BN71-Card-/371258575339
Yeah. While I'm having trouble with that link ATM... (Firefox keeps consuming memory on it until it's killed, lynx stalls, links seems to get it tho of course I see text only and due to that/cookies/scripts permissions I'm not sure which, I get basically all the bid outcomes, etc, all shown at once.) There's several models of HP quad-port gig-ethernet and at least one Sun model, on pricewatch.com, showing up as $80-100. I spent way too much time on this last nite so I'll probably wait a day or two before doing much besides replying here, but most of them seem to be posted by the same company, allhdd, and at least for the one I looked at, they had three prices available, new-in-retail-box ($110 or so IIRC), new-in-bulk- unit-box (the price quoted on pricewatch, since I had new-only set), and used/clean-tested, $50. Based on that I'm guessing they have the same three categories for the other models as well, and I'll have to do some further research before deciding which to get, but I'll likely get a used/clean-tested one, whatever model I ultimately pick. And, googling the model I did check on, the kernel has mature drivers, and HP certifies the model in its servers running RHEL, OpenSuSE, etc. Which is more or less what I expected, since ethernet cards tend to have about the best Linux support of any hardware out there, because it's so heavily used on net-connected servers and the like. One thing I /did/ come across, not for that NIC, but actually from someone running the am1 as a router with a /different/ NIC, was that he had made the mistake of buying a bypass-supporting card. The idea is that if the machine is off (but I'd guess with power still available), these cards flip to bypass mode and act like simple Ethernet hubs (or possibly switches, I'm not sure). While that doesn't interest me, he thought it was a neat idea, and bought one. The problem is that these cards apparently require special proprietary drivers to switch out of bypass mode, and he couldn't get that driver to work, so the card was stuck in bypass mode. =:^( Naturally after reading that, I wanted to ensure that whatever model I ended up with didn't have similar issues, and on at least the model I checked, there was no hint of such a thing in either the HP stuff I read or in the kernel driver option help, so I expect it'd be fine. The one thing I did see is that at one point they had a bad firmware, that was triggering machine lockups after some amount of uptime. Tho it was fixed by later firmware, it's possible that's why this vendor has all those used cards to get rid of... So obviously, I want to do a bit more checking on the other models as well, to see what's up before I decide. Between the bad firmware possibility and being a bit confused about the difference between models at this point, I've some further research to do. But that research will likely have to wait a few days to a day off... or at least until I catch up some after last nite... What I *DID* finally come up with last nite, is a general cost breakdown and reasonable/ballpark final total. The local Fry's Electronics has pretty much everything in stock but the quad-port NIC (the site lists one model of those too, but at $300, IIRC... pretty much blows the project out of the water at that price), at a couple dollars difference from the net price both on pricewatch and at newegg. So I'll probably get most of it there, and just order the NIC. Anyway, here's what I got, based on those frys prices. $$ item 85 quad-eth (obviously if I do the used, this will drop to ~$50) 60 am1 apu (frys about $5 high, here) 30 msi am1 mobo (right on price) 40 4-gig ddr3 (seems to be running a bit under ~$10/gig pretty much all over, and fry's doesn't seem to do under 4 gig sticks, now, so call it $40, 4 gig) ---- 215 subtotal Less sure on these items, but picked a number based on what I was seeing, to have one... 70 case/power (that newegg $50 incl 250W PS would bring this down...) 40 60 gig ssd --- 110 subtotal 325 total Obviously I could drop this a bit. $35 on the NIC, $5 on the APU, say $20 on the RAM as I could order online and should do just fine with 2 gig, $20 on the case/power, might actually go burned dvd for permanent storage just so I'm sure no crackers are going to store anything on it even if they get in, and players are $30 or under last I looked, so another $10 there. Or I could simply use a spare USB stick... So I could drop it $100 or so... more if I downgraded the APU, but at $55-60 I don't see the need, particularly as it'd still be a 25W part, just less powerful. So if I had to, I could do it @ 200 or so, but 325's already toward the lower end of the $300-400 I was thinking it'd cost earlier... plus tax/shipping/whatever, of course. And $325 is comparable to some of the higher end wifi routers out there, $300 or so, that this sort of matches against, altho they're higher end in entirely different areas. If I decide to throw in a wifi card/antenna (USB since the PCIE will be taken by the wired net), which I reasonably could at some point, perhaps after getting the netbook/chromebook I asked about in the original post as well such that , it'll still come in under $400, which is what I was definitely hoping to do. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
