2013-09-15 - [GRASE-Hotspot] An idea for Grase hardware

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From: Drazen <dr***a@radez.hr>
Message Hash: 9f0c7dcab66be1ca537976e15482ef46561440201d5cbbdab63ee94d37fc1f88
Message ID: <52356BE4.6000403@radez.hr>
Reply To: N/A
UTC Datetime: 2013-09-15 01:12:20 UTC
Raw Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2013 10:12:20 +0200

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I have decided to share an idea here with other grase users.
Hope Tim will have nothing against.

There is well known wisdom using old PCs for different linux projects. 
So Grase is not exception of this.

Well, why not reuse old notebook too?

Main reason why this is not widely used is fact that 99% of 
notebook/laptop devices have one wired interface only.
In theory we could use wireless interface as second one, but this is not 
practical for several reasons. Speed and radio covering to mention two 
important ones.

Well, today it is possible to get USB to Ethernet adapter which can play 
very well. It is quite cheap and performs well. According my short 
investigation, seems that ones which are designed for MAC computers will 
work upon connecting with most Linuxes . Ubuntu as well.
So I did purchased one and tried to push it at several of my Linux 
desktop machines. They all recognized new hardware upon connecting it to 
USB and it was ready in a second. I ordered mine from eBay.

Another reason why someone may decide to go this way is power 
consumption. If you are running your hotspot server at home for family 
and maybe neighbors, when server have to work 24/7, using any PC class 
machine, power consumption may affect your electric bill.
If you can't invest in low power Atom or similar integrated mini-itx 
board, an old notebook can help.

It is possible to find more or less old notebook which is partially 
cracked, non-working screen or several other malfunctioning why owner 
already bought new one. What only important is that board boots up, and 
recognize memory, LAN adapter, USB, and hard disk. Often is possible to 
find perfectly working machine just it is outdated and running modern 
windows very slow. In fact modern content becoming main reason while 
older computers getting slow.


Main trick in preparing such machine is to take out everything what we 
don't need  and what drains power.
Those are: screen, wireless card if any, modem card, sound card, 
blue-tooth /IR card, optical drive, touch-pad and keyboard. It is 
recommended to not putting back up-cover due to better cooling.

Additional tweaking may include passive cooling and custom made housing.

Final result should bring less power consumption and less heating, 
giving CPU more free cycles to do main job.
CD/DVD drive we use for first installation then will never need it 
again. so it goes out.
For installation is used external VGA display. Keyboard is essential for 
installation and then take it out.
Later if necessary we can plug external display and usb keyboard to 
access console what is really rare case.
I recommend to pass trough BIOS and disable everything there we don't 
need, set final boot sekvence.
Some NB BIOS has no option to allow to set automatic start after loosing 
power. So, after electric power outage, we need to power-on server manually.

Some illustration you can see here:
https://plus.google.com/photos/108215489267527604536/albums/5923511266866501809
This is HP nx6110. Which was pretty much cracked at all corners, display 
hinges where broken, display itself starts showing lines but main reason 
was disk self locking what made this machine unusable.

Have a fun
Drazen

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