Recently I purchased a few winterm computers from someone I know. These are small computers designed to connect people to a larger server to access programs instead of having a full blown computer sitting at each workstation. Also called "Thinclients" many businesses prefer these devices over the maintenance and power consumption of full computers.
Why winterms?
The average person would look at a winterm and ask "What does it do?", and after answering "Not much right now" they'd laugh and walk away. But to me the challenge of making something that was designed for one thing do something completely different is a fun and most awaited challenge.
The hurdles.
Winterms range from slow, low ram, no hard drive systems up to fully working computers in a very small case. The two I acquired are on the slower, almost no hard drive side.
One was the WYSE Winterm 3350, a stand up box with mouse, keyboard, ethernet, two usb ports, pcmcia port, and enough storage space to hold the bootloader and windows CE.
This one was the hardest of the two to get moving in the direction I wanted. Mainly due to the fact that a lot of the winterm hacking sites and resources that once roamed the net are now very outdated or completely dead. Many of the smaller versions of linux are also dead due to their lack of support.
But it wasn't to long (About 6 hours) after I got them home that I had linux running on the first winterm. I found that I first had to re flash the firmware using tftp a process that I may outline later on my website but for now I will not go into too much detail.
After flashing the firmware I was able to boot to a usb flash drive with a special linux distro modified just for this one specific type of winterm. Needless to say the boot time was very slow, and surfing the web almost painful due to its sad 200hmz processor and about 16mb or so of ram. However I still have the device, and eventually may come up with a use for it. Otherwise I may just sell or give it away some day.
The second winterm was a tk3350 which seamed much more promising. Again sporting two usb ports, and ethernet port, and ps/2 mouse and keyboard ports. This one does not have the pcmcia adapter built in but the manual boasts that a pci riser card, and pcmcia adapter can be purchased for the device. I don't think I'll be spending any money on the extras but its nice to know the option is available. On top of the regular specs these devices also had a 32mb compact flash card plugged into a cf to IDE adapter. Right away the first thing I did was disconnect the cf card and tried to read it on my computer. Its a fat16 partition but windows nor linux would read it. So instead I simply used dd if=/dev/sda of=winterm.img to back the device up. I then formatted it and surfed the web for a small linux distro that would fit on the 32mb card.
There are tons of small linux distros out on the net, but I wanted one with X windows and a web browser, this winterm had a 533mhz processor and 128mb or ram. So it was more then capable of running what I wanted. Sadly the closest I could come with a pre-built distro was slitaz
Sadly with X and Firefox/seamonkey/mozilla the iso image bulged at 29mb making it too big to fit on the cf card along side the bootloader and give it enough room to be contiguous. What I ended up doing was using slitaz-2.0 with just X and no browser. It booted wonderfully and worked like a charm. Although still no www browser except text based which for most people would be like having your teeth drilled out with a sand blaster.
Every viable use I came up with would require me to purchase a larger cf card. The same person a I purchased the units from came over with a 4gb ultra II card. However the cf adapter did not support it, and everything failed to load. And since I have more important things to spend my money on at the moment I'll have to wait. Here's a breakdown of what can be done with different sizes of cf cards on this unit.
32mb Load X windows and use the system to play some boring games like solitaire.
64mb Load X and browser and use the device as a web browsing device, or even load samba and use the device as a NAS (Network attached storage) device.
128mb-1GB card. The possibilities are endless. The device could be turned into an information kiosk, storage device, movie player (Assuming the video card could keep up) Car based computer, on and on and on my friends.
The tragic part is that one of the winterms had a windows xp embedded sticker on it, but this one was destroyed while someone else attempted to take it apart. Sadly this was probably a 700mhz unit which could have done far more.
Right now I am waiting on a 1gb donor card to test out some other items. Once all my testing and hacking about is done I'll be posting a rather large guide on my site with pictures to the entire process.
Note: The good unit I have seams to have a faulty nic port, which leaves me to run a usb ethernet card. Its not horrible, but would be nice to have the whole unit self contained. I may look into modding it later if I can get anything of use running on it.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Professionals wanted, No experience required.
Professionals wanted, No experience required.
After 13 long drawn out years in the IT field I have done and seen a lot. I worked for a local ISP for almost 8 years, worked at three computer repair shops, Substituted at a college for IT classes, and built, fiddled with, and customized countless devices and servers.
However with all this background there are tons of things I have not even thought about getting into, such as printer repair, tv repair, phone wiring, and a mountain of other items that I am now being asked to do. Its not a point of "I can't do it" its a point of these are not things I want to do, nor feel the need to learn. Some of you reading (if any) or possibly thinking "More work equals more pay right?". Wrong, I get paid the same hourly rate no matter if I'm doing a job that pays a flat rate $100.00 bucks no matter how long it takes, or working at a large project bringing in $50.00 plus an hour.
Its funny sometimes to see some of the things that come across my desk, but the one thing that always sticks out is the one liner that read "DO NOT ACCEPT IF YOU ARE NOT A QUALIFIED PROFESSIONAL" To me this means I shouldn't even be asked to carry out these jobs with the expectations of professionalism if I myself have never even put finger one on them before.
But in the IT biz, all this line seams to mean is "FAKE IT UNTIL IT WORKS". Which does not always sit well with me. So far most of the jobs have been simple enough to figure out, but is this why so many people are getting into the IT business without a clue. When we knowing allow people who have no training or experience in these areas to go off alone and fix (or possibly break further) problems that should be left to a real professional.
I consider myself a professional in one area and one area only. Hacking, and no not the break into your friends email account to see who they are talking to. But the hacking terminology that applies to those who can sit down at something and make it do what I want. I have been given more than a few dozen tasks over the years that most people would simply give up on. But once I have finished that task I feel a sense of accomplishment and pride no matter how small the task was to complete. And when asked by others "How the hell did you figure that out." My answer is almost always the same. A lot of trial and error.
So is it enough that we have drones of eager people who need money so bad that they will take on any task better suited for a real pro, simply because they need the money. For me the answer is yes. I'll continue to do whatever is asked of me from my employer until I either find another job that does not ask me to do what I do not know. Or until the day comes I run my own business and can make my own decisions as to what work I take on.
After 13 long drawn out years in the IT field I have done and seen a lot. I worked for a local ISP for almost 8 years, worked at three computer repair shops, Substituted at a college for IT classes, and built, fiddled with, and customized countless devices and servers.
However with all this background there are tons of things I have not even thought about getting into, such as printer repair, tv repair, phone wiring, and a mountain of other items that I am now being asked to do. Its not a point of "I can't do it" its a point of these are not things I want to do, nor feel the need to learn. Some of you reading (if any) or possibly thinking "More work equals more pay right?". Wrong, I get paid the same hourly rate no matter if I'm doing a job that pays a flat rate $100.00 bucks no matter how long it takes, or working at a large project bringing in $50.00 plus an hour.
Its funny sometimes to see some of the things that come across my desk, but the one thing that always sticks out is the one liner that read "DO NOT ACCEPT IF YOU ARE NOT A QUALIFIED PROFESSIONAL" To me this means I shouldn't even be asked to carry out these jobs with the expectations of professionalism if I myself have never even put finger one on them before.
But in the IT biz, all this line seams to mean is "FAKE IT UNTIL IT WORKS". Which does not always sit well with me. So far most of the jobs have been simple enough to figure out, but is this why so many people are getting into the IT business without a clue. When we knowing allow people who have no training or experience in these areas to go off alone and fix (or possibly break further) problems that should be left to a real professional.
I consider myself a professional in one area and one area only. Hacking, and no not the break into your friends email account to see who they are talking to. But the hacking terminology that applies to those who can sit down at something and make it do what I want. I have been given more than a few dozen tasks over the years that most people would simply give up on. But once I have finished that task I feel a sense of accomplishment and pride no matter how small the task was to complete. And when asked by others "How the hell did you figure that out." My answer is almost always the same. A lot of trial and error.
So is it enough that we have drones of eager people who need money so bad that they will take on any task better suited for a real pro, simply because they need the money. For me the answer is yes. I'll continue to do whatever is asked of me from my employer until I either find another job that does not ask me to do what I do not know. Or until the day comes I run my own business and can make my own decisions as to what work I take on.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Mediacom Sucks a fat one.
Sometimes it can really suck living in a small town. One reason I face is the lack of options for real high speed Internet at an affordable price.
When I moved back to my hometown and got an apartment we decided to go with Mediacom because they offered what seamed like the most for the price. Well we are finding out that lower price comes with a big problem.
1.Within a week our DVR had to be replaced because it would not stop rebooting, they replaced it with the exact same model, but so far so good.
2.The cable modem we got stuck with is HUGE, its big enough to house a full router with wifi capabilities, however its nothing more then a basic cable modem. This thing is literally 4 times the size of our last modem from comcast.
3. Internet goes out nightly, almost like they are running their own little parental control feature that no one asked for. I work all day, I do my Internet based stuff at night and I pay for an always on connection for a reason.
Their support always wants us to plug the wire directly into a single computer to test. And of course it works because at that time the Internet is working, but do the same thing when we are having problems and what do ya know. Broken still.
Some people say its probably my router, or other devices the modem connects to. Nope not buying it. I currently run smoothwall 3.0 which was an ipcop, that connects to a linksys router running dd-wrt. Both of these devices where up for almost a year solid at our last apartment with another provider.
The "point the finger at equipment that isn't ours" seams to be a mediacom (and several other ISP) moto. Take the blame away from your service and try to push it back onto the customer.
Another thing that pisses me off is when I did talk to tech support I was very specific in asking if they do MAC address filtering. I was told no of course. Then the installer had to register one of the computers and said it would work on any of the other computers. Ummmm, nope. Had to clone the mac of the desktop that was originally registered in order to get Internet to work.
All well, I'll either cancel and go with someone else, or call them and give them a very short window to fix it then cancel.
When I moved back to my hometown and got an apartment we decided to go with Mediacom because they offered what seamed like the most for the price. Well we are finding out that lower price comes with a big problem.
1.Within a week our DVR had to be replaced because it would not stop rebooting, they replaced it with the exact same model, but so far so good.
2.The cable modem we got stuck with is HUGE, its big enough to house a full router with wifi capabilities, however its nothing more then a basic cable modem. This thing is literally 4 times the size of our last modem from comcast.
3. Internet goes out nightly, almost like they are running their own little parental control feature that no one asked for. I work all day, I do my Internet based stuff at night and I pay for an always on connection for a reason.
Their support always wants us to plug the wire directly into a single computer to test. And of course it works because at that time the Internet is working, but do the same thing when we are having problems and what do ya know. Broken still.
Some people say its probably my router, or other devices the modem connects to. Nope not buying it. I currently run smoothwall 3.0 which was an ipcop, that connects to a linksys router running dd-wrt. Both of these devices where up for almost a year solid at our last apartment with another provider.
The "point the finger at equipment that isn't ours" seams to be a mediacom (and several other ISP) moto. Take the blame away from your service and try to push it back onto the customer.
Another thing that pisses me off is when I did talk to tech support I was very specific in asking if they do MAC address filtering. I was told no of course. Then the installer had to register one of the computers and said it would work on any of the other computers. Ummmm, nope. Had to clone the mac of the desktop that was originally registered in order to get Internet to work.
All well, I'll either cancel and go with someone else, or call them and give them a very short window to fix it then cancel.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Google Offers Free Holiday Wi-Fi at Airports..OH NO!!!!
Thanks to Google this holiday will be a bit more connected for travelers. Especially in airports where the big-G is offering FREE wifi. The idea sounds great, but lets stop for a minute and ask ourselves some basic questions.
1. What security is in place to ensure users data is not stolen, via MITM attacks such as arp poisoning, sniffing, or the uncountable possibilities that have plagued the wifi realm.
2. Why? Is free wifi in an airport really that important? why not just use your 3g enabled device (Where possible) to keep up with emails, and other web-based junkness.
Those are pretty much THE only questions to ask. Wifi is great, when installed and setup correctly (*Cough). But left open for anyone to use it becomes a script kiddies dream world of easy to grab information. I guess we will have to wait till after the holidays to see how many of santas, I mean satans little helpers got more then presents this year.
Perhaps those who would otherwise jump on the first bus to the airport to exploit this new found data mine will stay home. Or maybe security will be informed what to look for. For example, a laptop with a giant "BACKTRACK" logo as its wallpaper is a pretty good give away.
In any instance, I have done my part the best I can to inform you all. We'll leave the rest to the "experts" to handle.
Conspiracy warning:
Or is this just one big plot to gather information about what kind of data business travelers actually access during their airport breaks in order for Google to develop new applications.
Lol I doubt it.......or do I.
1. What security is in place to ensure users data is not stolen, via MITM attacks such as arp poisoning, sniffing, or the uncountable possibilities that have plagued the wifi realm.
2. Why? Is free wifi in an airport really that important? why not just use your 3g enabled device (Where possible) to keep up with emails, and other web-based junkness.
Those are pretty much THE only questions to ask. Wifi is great, when installed and setup correctly (*Cough). But left open for anyone to use it becomes a script kiddies dream world of easy to grab information. I guess we will have to wait till after the holidays to see how many of santas, I mean satans little helpers got more then presents this year.
Perhaps those who would otherwise jump on the first bus to the airport to exploit this new found data mine will stay home. Or maybe security will be informed what to look for. For example, a laptop with a giant "BACKTRACK" logo as its wallpaper is a pretty good give away.
In any instance, I have done my part the best I can to inform you all. We'll leave the rest to the "experts" to handle.
Conspiracy warning:
Or is this just one big plot to gather information about what kind of data business travelers actually access during their airport breaks in order for Google to develop new applications.
Lol I doubt it.......or do I.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Give me money.
Come on, you know you want to. And why not!
Instead of buying that new car, iproduct, or wasting money on something you don't really need. Why not give it to me. I could buy a house for my family. Invest in my kids college fund, or maybe even start my own business. So send that green my way and it will deffinately get used for better things.
Its worth a try.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Steal my Info please! Things to think about when using public wifi.
Several years ago I worked for an ISP who wanted to offer wifi as an internet service. The idea was simple enough, fewer wires and it did not require their phone lines to be of a specific quality to get internet service. The downsides:
1. Line of sight, if you couldn't see the Access Point tower you could not get service.
2. Bad weather interfered with it especially heavy rain and snow.
3. Wifi can not go through live trees or metal structures.
Those where the main problems, but other became apparent after some time of running the service. One of the first questions I asked was. "Since it goes through the air via radio signal doesn't that mean anyone can see it?" I was told no by the owner (Who was fired about a year later for some bad decisions) and yes by one of the admins at the time. We soon found out the real answer when customers started calling in saying that other peoples network shares where popping up in their "My network places" section. However this was not due to the wifi signal, but to all the customers being on the same network with no restrictions between them. This problem was fixed very soon but then other problems popped up.
These problems are ones that face any wireless setup.
1. We used mac address authentication to verify customers, this meant we checked for specific numbers that the customers wireless network device had before they could gain access to the internet. This number could be faked, so basically anyone could use the service as long as the original client was not online at the time. This is known as MAC address spoofing.
2. No wep/wpa keys where used. The system was open, so even if you was not a customer you could still watch information pass around just by associating with the AP but not obtaining an ip address.
3. Ligntening loved our nice tall antennas. And man where they expensive to replace.
On a public wifi connection a person can see just about everything you do on the internet. Heres a few.
1. Read your instant messages
2. See your usernames and passwords
3. View what photos your looking at
4. See the websites your going to
5. Redirect you to another site or replace items such as images with their own.
6. Access your file shares and snoop through your files.
7. Take down the entire wireless network making it difficult or impossible for anyone to get online
8. Gain access to the wifi device and modify its settings.
9. Record all the information from the entire network and take it home to look through at their own speed and time.
You'd think these would be reason enough to ban most public wifi "hotspots" but its not. Places like Chicago and New York are flooded with free wifi, even small towns like mine have way more then you'd think. Imagine sitting down at your hotel room to check your bank account, email, or even get tickets to a show only to have your information stolen by someone in a car across the street. And its only going to get worse, as wifi gets stronger and faster new tools will emerge to make the task of stealing information easier.
If anyone is interested in proof and you live in the Quincy, IL area let me know.
Jei
1. Line of sight, if you couldn't see the Access Point tower you could not get service.
2. Bad weather interfered with it especially heavy rain and snow.
3. Wifi can not go through live trees or metal structures.
Those where the main problems, but other became apparent after some time of running the service. One of the first questions I asked was. "Since it goes through the air via radio signal doesn't that mean anyone can see it?" I was told no by the owner (Who was fired about a year later for some bad decisions) and yes by one of the admins at the time. We soon found out the real answer when customers started calling in saying that other peoples network shares where popping up in their "My network places" section. However this was not due to the wifi signal, but to all the customers being on the same network with no restrictions between them. This problem was fixed very soon but then other problems popped up.
These problems are ones that face any wireless setup.
1. We used mac address authentication to verify customers, this meant we checked for specific numbers that the customers wireless network device had before they could gain access to the internet. This number could be faked, so basically anyone could use the service as long as the original client was not online at the time. This is known as MAC address spoofing.
2. No wep/wpa keys where used. The system was open, so even if you was not a customer you could still watch information pass around just by associating with the AP but not obtaining an ip address.
3. Ligntening loved our nice tall antennas. And man where they expensive to replace.
On a public wifi connection a person can see just about everything you do on the internet. Heres a few.
1. Read your instant messages
2. See your usernames and passwords
3. View what photos your looking at
4. See the websites your going to
5. Redirect you to another site or replace items such as images with their own.
6. Access your file shares and snoop through your files.
7. Take down the entire wireless network making it difficult or impossible for anyone to get online
8. Gain access to the wifi device and modify its settings.
9. Record all the information from the entire network and take it home to look through at their own speed and time.
You'd think these would be reason enough to ban most public wifi "hotspots" but its not. Places like Chicago and New York are flooded with free wifi, even small towns like mine have way more then you'd think. Imagine sitting down at your hotel room to check your bank account, email, or even get tickets to a show only to have your information stolen by someone in a car across the street. And its only going to get worse, as wifi gets stronger and faster new tools will emerge to make the task of stealing information easier.
If anyone is interested in proof and you live in the Quincy, IL area let me know.
Jei
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
DVD or Download?
As technology progresses slowly forward the way we get our entertainment changes. I remember VHS with its big bulky case, and the many times trying to retrieve the mangled mess of ribbon from the jaws of the vcr player. Then the DVD came out with promises of less space consumption, higher quality images and sound, lets not forget the "more durable then VHS tapes" claim that has now led many parents to let their kids use DVDs as a play toy. Only to find out later the disc won't play.
But now with Interactive tv's such as the Apple T.V. and a few others, set-top computers that connect to our Entertainment equipment while connecting us without wires to the World Wide Web. Now every gadget savvy person can sit on their couch and watch just about any movie without having to put in a VHS or DVD. For about $9.00 per month you can watch thousands of Netflix movies, for free you can use websites such as Hulu to watch tv shows and movies.
And at a price cheaper then a pack of smokes or a movie ticket you can download videos to watch anytime you want. Even the gaming market is seeing the trend, watching online videos is available on most popular consoles and rumors are spreading that others will follow.
So whats better? A solid tangible item you can play at anytime as long as your in the same location as it. Or a digital version that can be access from almost anywhere with a decent Internet connection.
Jei
But now with Interactive tv's such as the Apple T.V. and a few others, set-top computers that connect to our Entertainment equipment while connecting us without wires to the World Wide Web. Now every gadget savvy person can sit on their couch and watch just about any movie without having to put in a VHS or DVD. For about $9.00 per month you can watch thousands of Netflix movies, for free you can use websites such as Hulu to watch tv shows and movies.
And at a price cheaper then a pack of smokes or a movie ticket you can download videos to watch anytime you want. Even the gaming market is seeing the trend, watching online videos is available on most popular consoles and rumors are spreading that others will follow.
So whats better? A solid tangible item you can play at anytime as long as your in the same location as it. Or a digital version that can be access from almost anywhere with a decent Internet connection.
Jei
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