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NODE CIB
NODE CIB - STATUS 15/3/03
ADMIN: Clae [1]
STATUS: Gathering
LOCATION Near the corner of Punt and Toorak Roads. If you can see the
gigantic spire of Christ Church, South Yarra from your place, we're
opposite that.
LINE OF SIGHT
Please feel free to email me if you are in the following areas, and
would like to try some experimental linkage. Anyone who wants to come
play roof monkeys is welcome too - be warned it's a steep tiled roof
with a 2 & 1/2 storey drop.
* Probable: South Yarra, Prahran, Toorak, Windsor, St Kilda Road, St
Kilda, Malvern.
* Possible: South Melbourne, City, East Melbourne, Richmond
COMING SOON!
* Panorama photos from the roof.
* Mast-mounted strobe light and silver party balloon/ mirror ball.
I'm pretty inexperienced at networking. I've been a Mac user since
for ever, and have always used Appletalk networks (serial port
adapter, bus topology, proprietary protocol). They are fairly plug and
play as you'd expect, but it doesn't teach you anything about IP for
example. I have never set up a *nix box, although I have used them
occasionally. The same goes for Windows boxes and IP/Ethernet
networks. I'd certainly appreciate a whack with the cluestick.
There are two or more nodes under development here. To be honest,
working out how to do it as cheaply as possible is going to be the key
to getting them up, as my total income is fixed at about $200 a week,
apart from what I can make selling excess hardware. This is going to
make a big difference to the hardware choices I make. And I still have
an analogue synth habit to support
First, NodeCIB [2]. This is my old man's place, and I am not sure how
long I plan to live here. So I want to install a node here as cheaply
as possible, that I can leave behind if necessary, and which will
become part of Das Ubermesh (ad hoc for now, possible AP later,
OSPF/Zebra capable etc etc). It should also be as reliable as
possible, so I don't have to do many callouts. I'm assuming this means
a Unix box with cards, or an AP. I should probably also minimise the
amount of hole drilling and tile lifting I do.
Secondly, the low-power system for my mobile home. This will be a
leaf/ad hoc node initially - probably just my laptop and a roof mount
for my omni. Eventually I will want to add a directional antenna or
two and a low-power flashable AP or an embedded (PC-104 etc) system
board, and a mast. Further options would be a GPS and antenna
rotators. I would like to be able to provide local AP service at
temporary sites (like Melbourne Wireless meetings, parties, festivals,
conferences, protests) and bridge that to the rest of the network
through a directional.
A note about low-power use. This system will spend at least part of
its life running from a battery bank charged by solar panels and/or a
small wind turbine. All of these are expensive, so spending a little
extra on hardware to get the power useage down is well worth it. The
laptop would use somewhere between 10 and 45 watts depending on
screen, HD and wireless activity. To give you an idea, a 40 watt solar
panel is about $450 - and that's its peak power, at noon on a sunny
day. Ideally, I want to get down to under 5 watts, which might be
possible with a flashed AP.
EQUIPMENT AND SOFTWARE:
* 1 x 8dB omnidirectional antenna, N-type male connector
* 1 x 18dB Galaxy dish antenna (not hacked yet)
* 2 x Enterasys PCMCIA cards (Orinoco Silver clones)
* Flashed to Gold 128 bit WEP
* Compatible with Apple Airport software
* One modified with a permanent pigtail to N-female (thanks VAK)
* 1 x N male to male adapter
* 1 x Macintosh laptop
* 1400cs/133MHz/32MB/6GB - roughly P/166 speed
* MacOS [3] 8.6 with Orinoco drivers - will run to 9.2
* 2 PCMCIA Type II slots
* Ethernet via PCMCIA card or SCSI adapter (have both)
* No useable *nix distro available - Nubus motherboard
* UNIX-CAPABLE MACS - PCI
* 7220, 7500, Powerbase 180 (Mac clone, donated by Barry)
* Distros: Debian, Mandrake, LinuxPPC [4], YellowDog [5], SuSE [6],
BSD, Darwin
* CPUs from 100 mHz 601 to dual 200/604e (think P/166 to 2x P2/366)
* 3 PCI slots, 10baseT or base2 Ethernet, serial, SCSI, floppies,
CDs
* PCI slots appear to be v2.2, cards with Unix drivers work OK
* some upgradeable to G3 or G4 CPU
* adequate RAM and HD space available
* USB requires a PCI card
* UNIX CAPABLE MACS - NUBUS
* Distros: MKLinux, LinuxPPC [7]
* Ethernet, serial, SCSI, CD, floppy,
* No PCI slots - router/firewall/server behind AP
* 1 x 6100 set-top box hack
* 60 mHz 601 CPU (P100 speed)
* low power consumption - 24/7 operation?
* 1 x 8100 tower
* 80 MHz 601
* two SCSI buses - up to 14 hard drives
PC HARDWARE
* 1 x Mitac 586/166 laptop
* only one PC Card slot and no ethernet
* 16 MB of RAM
* serial port - PPP over null modem cable?
* 1 x Cyrix 200 CPU on ISA motherboard
* 3 x ISA 10bt/10b2 Ethernet cards
* 1 x generic VGA card
* no RAM (72 pin) - donations gratefully accepted
* power supply, case, CD and small HD available.
NEEDED:
* Hard discs - 6GB Quantum Fireball ATA and up, 2+ GB 2.5" ATA
* Cabling - type to be determined depending on hardware choices
* ISO CDs - I'm on dialup
* Such as... ?
* Complete Idiot's Guide to Unix Networking
* Practical assistance - roof climbing, configuration, etc
* Someone to connect to
Sale and trade page: [Clae's stack o stuff sought and sold]
For further information click here [8] to email.
Links:
------
[1] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?Clae
[2] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?NodeCIB
[3] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?MacOS
[4] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?LinuxPPC
[5] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?YellowDog
[6] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?SuSE
[7] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?LinuxPPC
[8] http://melbournewireless.org.au/users/?clae
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