It’s the big-ass, rack mountable machine on the right

One of the benefits for working for an internet service provider is getting access to cool hardware. We’re moving into a new building in a few weeks and one of the projects I manage is to get rid of the lab equipment we do not want to move. Instead of junking it or selling it on E-Bay which would have taken more time that it was worth, we decided to give the machines to the engineering staff. I didn’t get first pick but I didn’t get a lemon either

I took home a 4u, dual Pentium III (1.2 Ghz) with a gig of RAM and 2 18 GB SCSI drives. Even though they are Pentium III’s, this machine still has some serious horsepower and I had decided on using it for a Smoothwall Firewall appliance to put in between my Comcast cable modem and my 802.11g wireless access point. On bad thing about my house is that it only has one coax outlet for the entire house- in the living room. That means all my networking gear must reside behind the TV and in order to have computers elsewhere in the house, I have to send the signal wirelessly. So this new machine would have to go behind the TV. Or at least I thought.

When I turned it on, Bentley, who was very curious as to what I was doing on the floor with the fun play things (electrical cords), nearly jumped a foot in the air and his tail was puffed to the size of a body pillow. The machine was as loud as an old vacuum cleaner. Seriously. Not only that but it sucked enough electrical juice to dim the lights for a brief moment. Even though I new this was a box that was supposed to live in a datacenter, I had no idea it would have been this damn loud. Placement anywhere in side the house is not an option, even if I didn’t live with someone else. I’m thinking about putting it out in the garage but that would require me to provide an Ethernet drop out there and force me to make some wall penetrations which I’m reluctant to do just for a firewall. It’s a damn shame too ’cause this is a great box.