Date: 2004-06-05 17:47:00
Tags: computers
oh no, not again!
I got home this afternoon and opened up the laptop downstairs and got online. A couple of minutes later, I heard a suspicious <beep> from upstairs. Poof, my net connection was gone.

Turns out the power supply fan in my firewall machine has seized. I guess things got too hot inside and shut down. So, cover off, vacuum dust out, upstairs a/c on, ceiling fan on, and after letting it cool down for a few minutes with the power off, it seems to be stable now.

My firewall machine is a Dell Pentium 90 that is about ten years old. I wonder if I can still get a replacement power supply for that machine.

Comment

[info]pasketti
2004-06-06T00:57:36Z
You could probably buy one of those home firewall routers for less than the price of a power supply.
[info]ghewgill
2004-06-06T01:05:43Z

Well, that machine also does:




  • dns

  • smtp

  • pop3 (internal)

  • ntp

  • ssh gateway

  • http proxy (squid)



and probably other stuff I'm forgetting. I'm not sure I want to rearchitect my network at this point. Besides, I like having full control over the firewall operation and rules using ipfw with FreeBSD. I'll keep that idea in mind if I do find the energy to reorganize everything though.

[info]dbaker
2004-06-06T04:22:19Z
A Soekris would be a reliable, cheap solution.
[info]ghewgill
2004-06-06T15:35:32Z
Oh that's a good idea. But I suppose with a flash filesystem it wouldn't be appropriate for something like a mail spool due to the continuous disk activity. What about log files? Is it a practical concern that flash memory has a limited number of writes during its lifetime?
[info]equiraptor
2004-06-06T01:25:50Z
It's possible if you can't find a power supply, that you could find something old and slow but still functioning at the Goodwill computer store, or at a place like Discount Electronics...
[info]txdave
2004-06-06T05:52:00Z
What model number Dell? I might be able to find you a power supply
[info]ghewgill
2004-06-06T06:36:33Z
It's a Dell XPS P90, ca. 1994.
[info]luckman
2004-06-08T03:48:21Z
yes, but you have to order it from India now.
Greg Hewgill <greg@hewgill.com>