Kristian had a friend around for a sleep over last night. I didn’t want to stay up with them so I created a Smoothwall box. It is only a Pentium 166, 128 MB RAM and 6GB drive space. More powerful than machines I’ve developed software on during my career. I have more RAM I can put in it.
That gets the internet connection and acts as a web proxy, logger and more. That then connects to an 8 port switch. The switch has all the machines connected to it and the wireless router. I needed to buy a new switch as I’d run out on the wireless one. I have a network printer, Skype phone, file server, desktop machine and the wireless router.
After getting the laser printer so cheaply, I went to the same place to see if I could get some RAM out of other old printers. I wasn’t able to today, but they said I can go back in the week. I then went off to buy the new switch. I went to the local computer store and they had a good one at a nice price. I asked if he had any old fastpage RAM. He had a look out back and gave me 4 sticks for nothing. They didn’t have any stickers on them, so I was a free gamble. Turns out 2 of them are 8 MB and are now in the laser printer 🙂 My printer now has 20MB RAM. My first computer I developed commercially on had 16MB!
They repair computers and he had a few cases knocking about. I asked what he did with them. He said they throw them away. There was a very nice compact Compaq case and I asked if I could have it. He said OK, but the power supply was bust and as it was non standard I’d have trouble getting another one. Nothing lost, it was free.
Ben and I put some RAM in it, gave it the 80GB hard drive I was given earlier in the week and it is now a Windows 2003 Server 🙂 Nothing wrong with it at all.
This week I have had the following given to me of bought for little cost
| LaserJet 5N | $1 |
| Compaq Pentium 3 667 | Free |
| 16 MB Ram | Free |
| 80GB Hard drive | Free |
