Laptop

[Michael Havens]

On Wednesday 16 January 2008 2:50 pm, Alan Dayley wrote:
> > The HD ia an HTS424040m9at00-(pm).
> That'd be a Hitachi IDE (parallel ATA) drive.
> (http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/4k40/4k40.htm)
> What model is the laptop?  There is a sticker on the bottom, usually.
>
well..... there are 2 things that it may be.... a:
	Stelite M35X-S114 
or a 
	PA3416U-1MPC

> > Anyone have anything that will work? Does
> > this sound like a symptom of a failed hard drive?
>
> Yes. <or something else>

Is there no way to figure this out without swapping out parts?

Well, upon Stu's advice I loaded XUbuntu and find that I can mount the hard 
drive and view it's contents. I am unsure as to what this means. My father 
tried the restore disk to no avail. Does this mean that it is no longer any 
good as a windows box yet is good as a linux box.

> All of them have a firewall.  You mean which is designed to be a
> firewall appliance or dedicated as a firewall.
>
I do appologize for not being specific enough. I mean as a dedicated firewall. 
I was looking at the distrowatch you pasted for me and it seems as if ipcop 
is the only one I know anything about; however, I was intrigued with 
Devil-Linux (http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=devil) 
(http://www.devil-linux.org/home/index.php). Does anyone have any experience 
with this?

> > Should I get a wireless
> > card for the tower or a wireless router? If I get the router will I need
> > the old comnputer to use as a firewall or not..... hmmmmm.... do I even
> > need a firewall?
>
> First concentrate on "What" not "How"  What do you want your network to
> do for you?  What do you want that you don't currently have?  Then
> research for how you can build or get that.

Cool, the laptop has a wireless card preinstalled. What I am thinking I'll do 
with my tower is use it as the firewall and wireless router as my wife also 
is getting a laptop at some point soon. 
How do I scan the area for open connections until I get the router going?