At my fire station we have a home-brewed file server running FreeBSD. The "terminals" on the network are all W98 boxes (total of 4 permanently hooked up, plus several laptops). Our scheme here is to run the software , such as word processors, spreadsheets, etc. on the local boxes, but store all the data on the FreeBSD machine under workgroup security. The FreeBSD server uses Raid 5, has a UPS, etc. We have high-speed internet access using a cable-TV modem, and use a Linksys DHCP router for the network DHCP and to share the broadband connection. We have one very good networked laser printer and an old wide-carriage dot-matrix printer networked by means of a seperate "jet-direct" type box, also made by Linksys, and both printers are shared by all networked computers.
Recently my agency merged with two other adjoining fire departments, and the governing board established my station as the central headquarters station. We were faced with the problem of how to give access to centrally-located files, etc. to the other two stations.
The resources we had to work with was a spare serial port on the Unix machine, and a dedicated phone line used for a FAX machine.
What we did was this:
1. We decided to use the FAX machine to send faxes only. This is a good thing on it's own merits anyway, as the ribbons for the fax machine were very short life and were expensive. We decided to receive faxes by means of faxserver software, and print them to the networked laser.
2. We bought an $80.00 USRobotics modem, and attached it to the spare comm port on the Unix box. We programmed our phone system to ring the modem line immediately, but programmed a 20 second delay (about 4 or 5 rings) on the existing FAX extension. This way, if the faxserver doesn't answer the line the regular FAX mochine gets a shot.
3. We installed MGetty on the FreeBSD machine. MGetty is smart enough to know if the incoming call is a FAX or if it's data! (How does it know?) If it's a FAX, MGetty receives the fax and then sends it to the laser.
4. If you dial in using a computer, MGetty runs PPP and logs you onto the server.
We got it up and running last night. I went home and got out my old W98 laptop and hooked it to an external modem. When I dialed in, the machine authenticated to the network, ran the login script that mapped our network drives, and basically just worked! We had to have TCP/IP, PPP, and NetBEUI running on the W98 machine, but after we got that going, it worked great!
Thought I'd just let everyone know, and maybe this gets some others thinking about how they can use these resources. The amazing thing is how much you can do at very little cost if you just keep plugging away at it! I think we have only about $2500 in the whole network! Not bad for some roughnecks in funny hard hats and rubber boots, huh?
Recently my agency merged with two other adjoining fire departments, and the governing board established my station as the central headquarters station. We were faced with the problem of how to give access to centrally-located files, etc. to the other two stations.
The resources we had to work with was a spare serial port on the Unix machine, and a dedicated phone line used for a FAX machine.
What we did was this:
1. We decided to use the FAX machine to send faxes only. This is a good thing on it's own merits anyway, as the ribbons for the fax machine were very short life and were expensive. We decided to receive faxes by means of faxserver software, and print them to the networked laser.
2. We bought an $80.00 USRobotics modem, and attached it to the spare comm port on the Unix box. We programmed our phone system to ring the modem line immediately, but programmed a 20 second delay (about 4 or 5 rings) on the existing FAX extension. This way, if the faxserver doesn't answer the line the regular FAX mochine gets a shot.
3. We installed MGetty on the FreeBSD machine. MGetty is smart enough to know if the incoming call is a FAX or if it's data! (How does it know?) If it's a FAX, MGetty receives the fax and then sends it to the laser.
4. If you dial in using a computer, MGetty runs PPP and logs you onto the server.
We got it up and running last night. I went home and got out my old W98 laptop and hooked it to an external modem. When I dialed in, the machine authenticated to the network, ran the login script that mapped our network drives, and basically just worked! We had to have TCP/IP, PPP, and NetBEUI running on the W98 machine, but after we got that going, it worked great!
Thought I'd just let everyone know, and maybe this gets some others thinking about how they can use these resources. The amazing thing is how much you can do at very little cost if you just keep plugging away at it! I think we have only about $2500 in the whole network! Not bad for some roughnecks in funny hard hats and rubber boots, huh?
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