A Hidden 386 PC! Proxim RangeLAN2 Access Point
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Date: 2022-04-14
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Comments and reviews: 10
porklaser
If you like hidden 386s try looking for old an Pre-Lucent buyout Livingston PortMaster 2E access server - A staple of early-mid 90s pre-56K ISPs. Placed where you'd have shelves of actual external modems (Or modems stripped out of their shells and slid in to cool little custom made racks) and gobs of analog phone lines. (56K required PRI or BRI or any other digital line on the ISP side and the access servers were pure digital)
If you peeked inside the Portmaster you'd see a little 386SX chip chugging along running the show (Along side a lot of dedicated serial hardware. Portmasters were no slouch)
No DOS to be found on the livingston though. Not really PC hardware either. Ran custom unix that booted off an internal ROM in true embedded fashion. Accessible via serial console or telnet. Old portmasters saw use after the death of 33. 6 and modems in general because a device with gobs of serial ports could be turned in to a serial console access system with some clever configuration. Useful if you had lots of sun hardware or lots of linux systems with serial consoles. As was common in the late 90s and early 2000s.
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If you like hidden 386s try looking for old an Pre-Lucent buyout Livingston PortMaster 2E access server - A staple of early-mid 90s pre-56K ISPs. Placed where you'd have shelves of actual external modems (Or modems stripped out of their shells and slid in to cool little custom made racks) and gobs of analog phone lines. (56K required PRI or BRI or any other digital line on the ISP side and the access servers were pure digital)
If you peeked inside the Portmaster you'd see a little 386SX chip chugging along running the show (Along side a lot of dedicated serial hardware. Portmasters were no slouch)
No DOS to be found on the livingston though. Not really PC hardware either. Ran custom unix that booted off an internal ROM in true embedded fashion. Accessible via serial console or telnet. Old portmasters saw use after the death of 33. 6 and modems in general because a device with gobs of serial ports could be turned in to a serial console access system with some clever configuration. Useful if you had lots of sun hardware or lots of linux systems with serial consoles. As was common in the late 90s and early 2000s.
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Brian
This reminds me of our old Firewall / VPN devices. They replaced them my first week on the job, so I never saw them in action - but they hung around in a closet for years. They were Lucent -Bricks- - and the name was very apt, they were giant black 4U monstrosities with big industrial looking grab handles and even dust filters on the front. After a few years I thought about taking one or two to make a coffee table or something. I cracked it open and was surprised to see it was just a tiny Pentium II PC class motherboard tucked in one corner with a bunch of PCI LAN adapters and an Encryption Accelerator card booting off an IDE to CF adapter. Unlike these things, it did have a video card though. The newest one I looked at was a PIII and lacked the PCI Encryption Card so I guess the CPU was powerful enough by that point to do it all with software. They were replaced with Juniper NetScreen devices that I presume ran on ASICs because they were tiny in comparison. And now it is all in a landfill or scrap yard somewhere, made redundant by MPLS and IT managers running around yelling -put it in the cloud! -
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This reminds me of our old Firewall / VPN devices. They replaced them my first week on the job, so I never saw them in action - but they hung around in a closet for years. They were Lucent -Bricks- - and the name was very apt, they were giant black 4U monstrosities with big industrial looking grab handles and even dust filters on the front. After a few years I thought about taking one or two to make a coffee table or something. I cracked it open and was surprised to see it was just a tiny Pentium II PC class motherboard tucked in one corner with a bunch of PCI LAN adapters and an Encryption Accelerator card booting off an IDE to CF adapter. Unlike these things, it did have a video card though. The newest one I looked at was a PIII and lacked the PCI Encryption Card so I guess the CPU was powerful enough by that point to do it all with software. They were replaced with Juniper NetScreen devices that I presume ran on ASICs because they were tiny in comparison. And now it is all in a landfill or scrap yard somewhere, made redundant by MPLS and IT managers running around yelling -put it in the cloud! -
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GiSWiG
I remember using something similar with LEAF; Linux Embedded Application Firewall. It basically turns an old PC into an advanced gateway, router, firewall, and wireless access point. The nice thing was that LEAF only runs from a read-only floppy and that is the genius behind it. You configure the LEAF floppy in another PC and pop the disk and boot up the LEAF box. It loads everything in RAM and it runs from there. If you think the box has been compromised, you just shut it off. Any hacking done to it is gone. Then boot from the floppy again, probably after you've re-configured against the hack.
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I remember using something similar with LEAF; Linux Embedded Application Firewall. It basically turns an old PC into an advanced gateway, router, firewall, and wireless access point. The nice thing was that LEAF only runs from a read-only floppy and that is the genius behind it. You configure the LEAF floppy in another PC and pop the disk and boot up the LEAF box. It loads everything in RAM and it runs from there. If you think the box has been compromised, you just shut it off. Any hacking done to it is gone. Then boot from the floppy again, probably after you've re-configured against the hack.
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Jeffrey
A compact flash card could serve in place of the hard drive. An ISA IO card could drive a printer or other device. At one time printer ports were used like the GPIO pins on a Raspberry Pi.
It certainly needs another computer as a host / user interface. Since someone has network booted a 2 floppy original PC XT with 720 K of floppy as it sole stoage, Iimagine this criier can be hacked that far. There was a card which faked a video card and sent all its data out a serial line. It is truly a hardcore hacker's machine.
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A compact flash card could serve in place of the hard drive. An ISA IO card could drive a printer or other device. At one time printer ports were used like the GPIO pins on a Raspberry Pi.
It certainly needs another computer as a host / user interface. Since someone has network booted a 2 floppy original PC XT with 720 K of floppy as it sole stoage, Iimagine this criier can be hacked that far. There was a card which faked a video card and sent all its data out a serial line. It is truly a hardcore hacker's machine.
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Matthew
like using a hobbled motorcycle to power a small elevator! lol! but 800 ft through brick walls! that outstrips wifi. if it were tweaked maybe that would be a good go between to bridge the gap between crappy long distace wifi and cellular data towers, thus opening up cheaper or even free hihger quality public internet as a utilaty instead of the high price pay to play internet we have now. idea being to open the door for more access for a lot less money.
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like using a hobbled motorcycle to power a small elevator! lol! but 800 ft through brick walls! that outstrips wifi. if it were tweaked maybe that would be a good go between to bridge the gap between crappy long distace wifi and cellular data towers, thus opening up cheaper or even free hihger quality public internet as a utilaty instead of the high price pay to play internet we have now. idea being to open the door for more access for a lot less money.
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TheRealHeavyG
I have a box of 24 motherboards for these. Well, specifically, they are IBM OPAL LX 486SLC2 system boards. The 486SLC2 is really a 386 that IBM did some. stuff to. Unfortunately, out of the box of 24, only 4 appear to be salvageable. I'm going to remove the barrel battery and may replace with a newer 3. 6v battery. I also came across 8 super small AT cases that I've been selling on the e of bays. I'm keeping one for myself.
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I have a box of 24 motherboards for these. Well, specifically, they are IBM OPAL LX 486SLC2 system boards. The 486SLC2 is really a 386 that IBM did some. stuff to. Unfortunately, out of the box of 24, only 4 appear to be salvageable. I'm going to remove the barrel battery and may replace with a newer 3. 6v battery. I also came across 8 super small AT cases that I've been selling on the e of bays. I'm keeping one for myself.
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Joseph
i imagine that the ISA riser card could be used to add an ISA video card and audio card. or some one could try to solder a VGA port onto the motherboard. either way, i would love to get a few of these and play with them to see if i could make at least one into a working 386 PC.
EDIT: as of January 05, 2019, i have found only one of the intermec models on ebay for US $895. 00.
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i imagine that the ISA riser card could be used to add an ISA video card and audio card. or some one could try to solder a VGA port onto the motherboard. either way, i would love to get a few of these and play with them to see if i could make at least one into a working 386 PC.
EDIT: as of January 05, 2019, i have found only one of the intermec models on ebay for US $895. 00.
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pimento
This sort of standard PC/server hardware in an appliance is still used today in a bunch of networking kit - I've seen an old network firewall used as a media PC just by putting a video card in it and installing linux - it's also common that the only video output is a serial port - usually via RJ-45 connector, but it's the same deal as a 9-pin, just a different connector.
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This sort of standard PC/server hardware in an appliance is still used today in a bunch of networking kit - I've seen an old network firewall used as a media PC just by putting a video card in it and installing linux - it's also common that the only video output is a serial port - usually via RJ-45 connector, but it's the same deal as a 9-pin, just a different connector.
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Johan
So, I'm wondering: removing the ISA cards, put a graphics card and an IDE controllor card in the two slots (I assume there are two) and put one of those flash drives that go directly on the controller card, and you should theoretically have a fully functioning 386? Of course, you'd need a way to replace the battery and that stuff too but the rest should work.
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So, I'm wondering: removing the ISA cards, put a graphics card and an IDE controllor card in the two slots (I assume there are two) and put one of those flash drives that go directly on the controller card, and you should theoretically have a fully functioning 386? Of course, you'd need a way to replace the battery and that stuff too but the rest should work.
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Jeffrey
The SX is 16 bit bus CPU. It talks to the world 16 bits at time, while being a 32 bit chip internally. That makes it really a 20 Mhz 386 functionally 386SXs talk naturally on a 16 bit ISA bus like a 286, AT type CPU. Code wise, they are like their 32 bit bussed relatives. I had one. I thought of it as a racing squirrel. I ran DOS and linux on it.
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The SX is 16 bit bus CPU. It talks to the world 16 bits at time, while being a 32 bit chip internally. That makes it really a 20 Mhz 386 functionally 386SXs talk naturally on a 16 bit ISA bus like a 286, AT type CPU. Code wise, they are like their 32 bit bussed relatives. I had one. I thought of it as a racing squirrel. I ran DOS and linux on it.
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