Broadcom Archives - The Silicon Underground

Gigabit card only connecting at 100mbps? Here’s the fix.

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 11:00:54 +0000

I finished a modernization project where I replaced all of my 100-megabit gear with gigabit-capable gear, including my cabling and router and access points. But after I replaced my last 100-megabit switch, I found we had two Windows desktops refusing

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Best Pfsense hardware

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 13 Mar 2017 11:00:55 +0000

The best Pfsense hardware is rather subjective. I think the ideal Pfsense box should deliver solid performance while being affordable. A year or so ago, Pauldotcom did a podcast on building your own router, but the resulting beast was overkill. It

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Lenovo Thinkcentre M58 upgrades

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 12:00:35 +0000

I picked up an off-lease Lenovo Thinkcentre M58 over the weekend. Based on the date code on the hard drive, this one dates to 2010. It’s a serviceable machine. You have a few options when it comes to Lenovo Thinkcentre M58

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Save money on a PCIe dual NIC

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 18 Nov 2016 12:00:29 +0000

I’ve written before how to get a standard PCI dual NIC for a low, low price–but what about a PCIe dual NIC? PCI Express needs love too, of course. It turns out it’s not hard to find a good, cheap

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Need a good, cheap dual gigabit NIC? I have just the thing.

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 22 Jul 2015 11:00:34 +0000

If you need gigabit ports for your home server or router project and you’re short on available expansion slots, I have just the thing. Home sysadmins have known for a while that you can get cheap PCI-X Intel NICs and

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How to find inexpensive routers to run DD-WRT

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 01 Apr 2015 11:00:50 +0000

I’ve been using and recommending DD-WRT for years, but it’s getting harder to find inexpensive routers to run DD-WRT. Many inexpensive routers now use non-Broadcom chipsets that DD-WRT and other third-party firmware don’t support well, or at all. But there’s still a

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Upgrading an HP Mini 110 to Linux Mint 17

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 03 Sep 2014 11:00:55 +0000

Over the Labor Day weekend I decided to upgrade my HP Mini 110 netbook to Linux Mint 17. The Mini 110 can handle Windows 7, but Linux Mint doesn’t cost any money and I figure a Linux box is more

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The world’s fastest budget PC

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 25 Feb 2014 11:00:04 +0000

So, a relative’s PC was getting a bit aged, and runs Windows XP, barely, so I talked them into an upgrade. I noticed that Micro Center had HP/Compaq DC5700s for $99. They were standard issue office PCs a few years

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Disabling WPS by upgrading to DD-WRT

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:09:49 +0000

Tom Gatermann told me he succeeded in disabling WPS by upgrading his Linksys router–I didn’t ask what model and probably shouldn’t post that anyway–with DD-WRT. Explicitly disabling WPS in DD-WRT is unnecessary because DD-WRT doesn’t implement WPS at all–which is

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Flaky networking? Suspect cheap NICs

Dave Farquhar — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 19:29:04 +0000

It was 1998. I was getting ready to network my two PCs, so I asked my friendly neighborhood networking professional what to buy. He didn’t hesitate. “Intel or 3Com,” he said. “Cheap NICs will talk, but they’ll start acting flaky

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