Outfiting An Old Computer

[Yozuki]

I've recently acquired a Dell Latitude XPi P90T. It is a rather old computer, made in 1995. It has a 90Mhz Pentium 24MB Ram (40 is the max if I upgrade it), and it has 1MB of Video Ram (not like that is really important).

I'm under the impression the smaller space confinements you have, the better you use what resources you have. I think it's the Japanese mentality of small things. Anyway, I've currently got the following programs ready:

Netscape Communicator 4.8
Windows Media Player 6.4
Quicktime 3.0.2
Real Player 5.0

What I still need:
Internet Explorer
DirectX
Macromedia Shockwave and Flash
AOL Instant Messenger
Yahoo Messenger
MSN Messenger
Mozilla

Basically like any computer user with an old machine, I want the highest version I can go, without sacrificing much compatability and speed (though a little is acceptable for better performance).

I don't think Mozilla (any version) will run on this computer (not sure though), so I'm using Netscape. The messengers I've heard require you to upgrade to the latest version or they won't work. Any help would be appreciated!

[locustfurnace]

Which OS are you using? 95 or 98? 95 would be better, requires less RAM, disk space.
You can find many older versions of many web browsers at http://browsers.evolt.org/

Optimize your vcache, and paging size for increased performance.
http://www.oldversion.com/talk/index.php?a...&t=1610&hl=swap

Try a number of the alternative chat clients I've listed for an all-in-one, which should handle all your messenger requirements in 1 app.
http://www.oldversion.com/talk/index.php?a...t=ST&f=2&t=1395

[Jaime Andrés]

I have just read an article in a PC magazine which gives a whole new perspective on old computers languishing in the cupboard with the following three interesting uses.

Firewall on a 486
What you need
. 486 75MHz PC
. Smoothwall express (free download)
. Network cards

Media streaming client and server
What you need
. Pentium 90MHz PC
. 48MB RAM
. 6GB hard disk or bigger
. Network card

Intrusion-detection system
What you need
.500MHz Pentium3 or faster
. Network card
. Eagle X

If anyone is genuinely interested in any of the above I can scan the article and send it on.

[locustfurnace]

I've built many old systems from 386 and 486 systems, from simple firewalls, to routers to dedicated jukebox machines.
Even older computers work fine with older operating systems, the oldest I have recently built was from a 286 8Mhz 640kbs RAM laptop with 'New Deal OS', which could surf the net or email.
Old computers today, were the best in their time, and did their jobs well, the only reason people think they need bigger and fast machines is due to marketing, people generally have more power than needed. Most really do not need a 3Ghz machine to write a email, surf the net or type out a resume.
There are many floppy disk based Firewall systems, which turn an old machine into a dedicated firewall with no hard drive, just a floppy image & 2/3 nics.
I am currently running a packet filtering box with Apache SSL web server, SSH server, email server, DNS caching proxy & weather service on a thincleint - 233Mhz, 64megs RAM. Originally had QNX 2.0 on a Disk-on-Chip OS, which was bypassed and i wired in a IDE connector and power supply to supposrt a 1gig hard drive.
Then the other machine is running at 200Mhz with Squid caching Proxy and Dans Guardian for content filtering. 1 gig hard drive as well.
With 5 boxes connecting to the packet filtering machines, the average CPU load is 0.05%. This is on a 233 GEO Cyrix CPU machine, and the Cyrix is really a poor quality chip with its tiny 16kb cache. (compared to the 512kb cache on Athon XP 'Barton" core I run on main system.)

[Jaime Andrés]

You didn't write that PC Pro article did you LF. LOL

I have an 'obsolete' Pentium 100MHz PC, and I'm going to have a go at the firewall option the article mentions that software firewalls on the same disk cannot be relied on.
Working it out it will be much cheaper and more effective to get this old PC back to life than just one years subscription to Norton for their Firewall.

[locustfurnace]

Yes, a firewall on the core system is not as effective as one outside of the system, which one based on a CD-R is very powerful, as the CD-R can not be altered. The only way to make changes is to replace the CD with a newly recorded image. This makes it alot more difficult for someone to break into your system by placing a rootkit on the firewall. Since the medium is Read-Only.
I have used floppy drives and floppy based firewall systems, as I seen the need for a CD based firewall a bit overkill, since they usually require alot of power as they offer more features than a basic firewall. The less you offer on the firewall box, the less chances of compromises.
The Floppy based firewall I used was extremely fit for the job at hand, not overpowered or underpowerd. The box was a old Compaq 486, which features a bios write protect for the floppy, plus the floppy has the write protect tab feature. It does not matter that a floppy is slower to load, since your only loading it once, and only when changes are made. Once the complete system is then loaded into RAM, it is very fast.
No Harddrives means; less noise, less heat, less power required to run the system. The thinclient box I make mention of comes with absolutely No Fans, so it is very quite. Compared to my main box which has 7 fans. 4 hard drives, 1 floppy, 1 SuperDisk, a CD recorder and more.
With a firewall box, you can also remove the need for a router, as most firewalls will also do routing and NAT (Network Address Translation) which permits 1 assigned IP address for all other boxes connected.
Then if you like you could stick the firewall box in a corner, since you wont need a monitor,keyboard or mouse, as most operate headless, and you can telnet (bad idea mostly) or SSH into the box for any adjustments.
If anything happens, such as a compromise, you can easily replace the floppy disk with a brand new one. Booting a Floppy works on all older machines, as bootable CD's do not always.

I currently built my packet filter on the thinclient box, takes alot of work building rules and managing the packet filtering, but is alot better also then relying on someone else's idea of what you need for a firewall.

[Jaime Andrés]

Your system seems a lot more simpler than the one in mentioned in this article. It's too late for me now 02.00 CET, but tomorrow I'll post up the text of this firewall article just to get your opinion before I go any furthur.

[locustfurnace]

I have tested 'Smoothwall' in the past as an application on a GNU/Linux box.
Not sure why they recommened a 500MHZ box for an IDS either! Thats alot of power for that. An IDS should and does work fine on much lower powered systems also. If you were connected to several hundred machines, then it would be a good idea to use more powerful CPU's, but for a home user, I think thats a bit overkill. Tripwire which alot of people use and is a very good IDS just makes requirements of a pentium-class CPU.
A poor-man's Tripwire is just using MD5 checksums. Make a MD5 of all files, redirect output to a text file and email yourself the result, or copy to a floppy, and store offline, takes a few minutes to check and verify, if you use an NFS mount, you could just make a seperate NFS which you much explicitly mount - to make it not available normally. then just point your MD5 app to the file to verify the checksum of all files. This can be done on a schedule as well. Or store your MD5 output on a CD-R as it again, can not be changed. Or you may be able to use snort. I perfer the MD5 route myself, and run a rootkit checker if applicable on your OS.
If your wanting a firewall, build just a firewall, if you also want an e-mail server, web server, place them on seperate box. Inside the firewall protected LAN, you can always port forward if you want outside access to the web server.

[Jaime Andrés]

I have scanned a .pdf copy of the firewall project on this link http://home.no/cptsmiley/firewallproject.pdf. I would be grateful for any comments to it's practibility.

[locustfurnace]

How old is this article by the way?
What exactly do YOU want to accomplish. There are so many options, if you say what you want to acheive, it might be easier to see if something fits you needs.
Do you want all machines connected to use DHCP assigned IP's, or do you want to use static ones, I prefer static myself, it makes is easier to ping machines, to use Network Neighbourhood and Samba and to access the web servers on each machine (for internal use only). It also makes it easier to diagnose problems with the lan if they arise.
The article makes mention of requirement of a hard drive, but does not make mention of it being used in the full article. Plus it also makes mention of running a SMTP (e-mail server), do you plan to run an e-mail server? Not a good idea if you never done it before and do not understand the service, which is usually "sendmail" a rather difficult service to correctly configure for many.
it also appears it is running a web server, again, if not sure how to set one up correctly, can be a problem down the road. The server is possibly the Apache Web Server, alittle overkill for most home users also. and again, if never set up Apache, can be a chore to do it correctly.
If the article makes mention of an older release of smoothwall. you should not look for the old version, but test the latest, with the security patches in place.
A draw back to running these services on a CD, is that if they discover a hole in the service, you can not patch it, as you could normally under a hard drive installation, Yoy only left up to burning a new CD, not a problem, but if your not going to use these, Apache, Sendmail, why have them, they are potentail security risks if your not keeping tabs on the security bulletins and updating as necessary.
This is why if you do not plan to use them, don't run them, and don't have them on the firewall box. Just make a single Firewall box, sans the servers.

In the past I have used both of these floppy-based Firewalls, all they are are firewalls. and they require very little of everything to work, and work well.[/list][*]ClosedBSD (FREEWARE)
* BSD based firewall and network address translation utility which boots off of a single floppy disk, and requires no hard drive. [*]Frazierwall (FREEWARE)
Floppy-Disk based firewall. Makes use of GNU/Linux

• floppyfw (FREEWARE) is a router with the advanced firewall-capabilities in Linux that fits on one single floppy disc.
• Coyote Linux floppy firewall (FREEWARE)
  This product is a single floppy distribution of Linux that is designed for the sole purpose of sharing an Internet connection. The floppy can be created using either a Microsoft Windows wizard, or by using a set of Linux shell scripts.

[/list]
CD-Based firewalls,

• NetBoz (FREEWARE)
  NetBoz works over standard FreeBSD services, giving maximum flexibility, ease of use and performance to corporate networks.
  Netboz boots from a CD, making a firewall of any Pentium© class PC, Works with 2 or 3 network interfaces

Related Tools

• PicoBSD (FREEWARE)
  PicoBSD is a one floppy version of FreeBSD 3.0-current, which in its different variations allows you to have secure dialup access, small diskless router or even a dial-in server. And all this on only one standard 1.44MB floppy. It runs on a minimum 386SX CPU with 8MB of RAM (no HDD required&#33.
• theWall (FREEWARE)
  TheWall is a collection of PicoBSD configuration trees and prebuild binaries for various platforms that provides NAT and firewall services for a small network. Requirements; Generic 486 (or better) PC clone with 16mb (or more) RAM, floppy drive and two supported NICs (a hard disk is NOT required).
• emBSD powered firewalls (FREEWARE)
  emBSD is a stripped down version of OpenBSD. The concept for emBSD is a small foot print operating system for x86 (or other) hardware to use as little hard disk space as possible yet provide a fully functional Routing Firewall. The main driving force behind this concept is to not use a hard disk drive at all, but use off the shelf Compact Flash cards.