Low-Profile Video Cards? 28
Catherine Ellerman asks: "I'm after a couple of REALLY low-profile video cards to put in a firewall/router. Motherboards with built in video and networking are available but the reason why I don't really want to go out and buy a new motherboard is because a lot of the processing power would be wasted. Back in my parts store I've a couple of 120Mhz Pentium motherboards that will do the job nicely and a friend of mine helped me source the low-profile NICs (at just over an inch high they're hardly noticeable). All I need now is someone to help me find a couple of low-profile video cards and get the bugs out of the latest kernel."
Another idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Why not leave a video card out completely? If this is for a router/firewall/NAT gateway, you shouldn't need to do much console work. Build the system with no video card at all, and use the serial port for a console during emergencies.
Just my 2 , since that's what I do on my network.
Re:Another idea (Score:2)
For my low profile setups i usually use an 1 slot isa extender (in US, i have seen those at fry's, or you could use isa slots and sockets from old/fried mobos and cards and the soldering iron to make an L-shaped extender) and a isa vga or hercules card (anything that will make the bios happy)
Re:Another idea (Score:1)
Re:Another idea (Score:2)
Re:Another idea (Score:1)
Re:Buggy kernel... (Score:2)
The Freebsd install floppy will sense and use a serial console if you send enough Break signals.
i'll second that Re:Buggy kernel... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Buggy kernel... (Score:2)
Forget about Video Cards (Score:1)
Make sure that sshd is started upon boot. Don't forget to remove the keyboard too... you might still control the system through a joystick and a daemon which lets you shutdown or reboot the system with it ;-)
That's nice... (Score:2)
That's nice for you.
Only problem is you forgot to put your mail adress in the post so we can get rid of our garbage.
But yes, I understand your problem, just when you need that something low-profile, noone in the neighbourhood seems to have some left-overs.
Soldering Iron (Score:2)
This is the sort of thing where I'd break out some wire-wrap wire and a soldering iron. Duct tape the video card somewhere and wire it to the ISA connector. (I pity the fool that does this with a PCI card.)
Can you believe that I've only fried one motherboard doing crap like that?
Alternate Options (Score:2)
Re:Alternate Options (Score:2)
Re:Alternate Options (Score:2)
Re:Alternate Options (Score:1)
Re:Alternate Options (Score:2)
you can't just turn 1 slot into 2 without a bridge built onto the riser
You can also run into the problem of violating the PCI power limits if you try to power 2 cards off of one slot. Most cards don't come near to the limit, but you increase the odds of a problem by trying to power more than one card.
another option (Score:2)
Re:another option (Score:2)
My favorite place for risers is Barada In Canada [barada.ca]. The seem to have a fairly large selection of pci and isa risers. However, I didn't see any ISA risers under 2.4 inches tall, but some of the PCI risers (even old Pentium boards should support these) are very small.
Of course, if your case doesn't like side-ways cards, you will need to take your Dremel to it or come up with some other way to hack it together.
All of this is assuming that you are going to need the video output from your low profile setup. If you don't need a direct monitor feed from the box, I would highly recommend The Weasel [realweasel.com] and an extra serial port on another machine. If you read Japanese and have a currency converter handy, you can check out the product page [plathome.co.jp] on their distributor's site.
Perhaps you could share your design with use (the case in particular) so that we don't have to guess at your setup?
Matrox.. (Score:2)
Re:Matrox.. (Score:1)
card with 4mb and works with Redhat 7.1.
hope this helps
Ask Google (Score:3, Informative)
Google "low-profile pci video card" [google.com]
Yeesh.
What about (Score:2, Informative)
They make right angle and flexible ones.
-Senine
Why not fix the BIOS instead? (Score:1)
Might not work, might. If nothing else, if you crisp the BIOSs of all your spare boards, you would have a good excuse to pick up something cheap that DID boot without monitor.
I woulden't do it with a spiffy new MB, but it's probably less likely to auger your system than tearing a socket out and wire-wrapping a video card into it.
What kind of case are you going to use? (Score:2)