SETTING UP FREESCO
want to try FREESCO the first thing you should do is check that you have all the necessary hardware. The main item you will need is an old computer that isn’t being used for anything else. It should be a 386 or better with at least 6MB of RAM. It doesn’t require a hard disk as FREESCO can boot and run from a floppy. Nor will it need a keyboard or monitor: once set up FREESCO can run without either. If you really can’t spare a keyboard, though, make sure you can disable the keyboard test in the BIOS boot-up checks or you may find that the boot process halts with a “keyboard not found” error. You’ll need a network card to connect your router PC to your other computers. FREESCO supports several inexpensive, popular cards including the NE1000, NE2000, 3C509 and 3C59x series. If you’re buying a network card specially for this project make sure that its IRQs and I/O addresses can be manually configured. FREESCO doesn’t support Plug and Play. “Jumperless” cards are OK, although you’ll have to set them up first using the DOS or Windows based setup software. Use the default settings if possible, to make it easy for FREESCO to detect the card. Finally, you’ll need a modem. If you plan to use an internal modem, make sure it isn’t a Winmodem. This type of modem is often supplied with a new PC, but it needs special Windows drivers in order to work. It won’t, therefore, run under Linux.
Buffered ports If the modem is an ISA bus card and not PCI, it’s almost certainly OK. If it’s an external modem you shouldn’t have a problem, but if the computer is very old make sure the serial port has a buffered UART compatible with the INS 16550A. Most 386s and many 486s have un-buffered ports that drop characters when run at the speeds needed to use a V90 modem or ISDN TA. Note that FREESCO only supports external TAs that are connected via the serial port and can be controlled in the same manner as modems using the AT command set. If your old computer lacks a buffered serial port you may be forced to buy an internal modem especially for FREESCO. A few years ago replacement serial cards were easy and cheap to obtain; now, even ISA internal modems are getting a bit hard to find. An inexpensive choice would be the Dynanet 56K Internal ISA from Simply Computers. It works very well with FREESCO. Having got all the bits together, your next step will be to download the FREESCO software. You can get this from the FREESCO home page at http://www. freesco.org. If you can’t get to this site try www. freesco.net or www.freesco.com instead: these URLs point to a mirror page. You should download two files: the software – currently version 0.26 – and the documentation, which at the time of writing was only up to version 2.0. Both are Zip format archives. Unzip them to a convenient tempo-
PROJECT
rary location. The documentation is a set of HTML files so you’ll want to put it somewhere where you can view it in a browser while you’re setting up the software. An annoying feature of the documentation is that it contains a banner ad on each page: this may make your computer try to connect to the Internet whenever you open it.
Boot floppy Now you need to create the FREESCO boot floppy. The software archive that you downloaded contains a disk image which you simply transfer to a spare floppy disk. Open a console window, change to the directory containing the archive contents and execute the command: dd if=freesco.026 of=/dev/fd0
INFO The FREESCO home page: http://www.freesco.org/ diald information: http://diald.unix.ch/ ■
If you’re using Windows or DOS you can achieve the same result using the command: rawrite.exe freesco.026 For convenience, the DOS rawrite program is included in the package. Now the fun starts. Install the network card and modem in your router computer, connect it to your network and attach a monitor and keyboard. Boot the computer from the floppy disk you just prepared, and when the command prompt comes up log in as root, password root. (You’ll probably want to change this later on: the process as described in the documentation.) If the computer’s hard disk was previously formatted for DOS you now have the choice of installing FREESCO to the hard disk. There are several benefits of doing this. Hard disks are less errorprone than floppies so you’ll avoid read errors. FREESCO will load quicker. A hard disk installation will also give you needed extra space if you want to use the built-in web server. To install FREESCO to the hard disk type the command: move2hdd
Fig. 1: Choosing your setup option
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