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Mini Network with a Big XServe Style

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Posted On: February 4th, 2006 by kencollins

Or, how to be the biggest network geek you can in only 1 square foot of space. Starting last year after reading Ward Mundy's How-To Bonanza, I knew I needed to use the Mac Mini as the core hardware component for my home network. Mostly because it looks good and small form fits easily on my desk. Good as that might be, the Mac Minis do have drawbacks and, if you're serious about your hosting choices, these do have to be overcome; this is what my post is all about.

So like most people that create networks I did not realize that the Mac Mini includes 3 high speed network interfaces and that with a little bit of work and the right architecture they can be used to operate in much the same manner one would see in a high-end network operations centers. I manage one such NOC and I wanted my home network to function like most companies who do serious business online. These features typically include:

  • Internal LAN Network Interfaces - (10.0.1.0/24 Addresses)
  • Internal Perimeter Network (DMZ) Behind a NAT or Port Forwarding Firewall
  • Both Internal (LAN) and External (Public) DNS Services
  • IP Over Firewire Connections - (192.168.1.0/25 Addresses)
  • Hard Drive Redundancy and Backup Using RsyncX - (typically RAID 1 or 5)

Starting At The End

Below is a simple diagram of my final network. I had to lose a few features from the list above or even change their meaning a bit, but I did end up with a network that utilizes most of them.

Most Advanced Simple Mac Mini Network Diagram

Public Interfaces

In the diagram above, the (green) represents public 100baseT ethernet interfaces while (orange) and (red) represent an internal network. Due to many questions regarding this layout, I want to stress that the WebSvr and generic Mini (mail and DNS) are publicly available on the 100baseT connections through my Linksys switch. The AirPort is for local LAN only, see below for details.

Internal Local Area Network ( LAN )

First thing on the list that is the most important feature. A local area network that allows connections to each server without going outside to the public internet and thus taking up valuable bandwidth to those public interfaces. It's also good for security! The AirPort Extreme I had did this quite well by setting it to share a network connection using DHCP and NAT on the 10.0.1.0/24 subnet. The AirPort internet connection is setup to DHCP to my ISP from its WAN port. Each Mac Mini's AirPort network interface is manually set on its own IP address that never changes. This will need to be done so you can assign it an internal DNS name and reverse PTR record.

Internal DNS Services ( WebSvr Mini )

Now that we have an internal LAN we can use this to host our own DNS so that machines on the local network including my powerbooks and other systems will use the AirPort interfaces for services. For instance, if I browse to my website from home, I am not using the public interface and bandwidth, but rather the IP with the AirPort address. The WebSvr Mini was my best choice for hosting DNS and I have BIND 9 configured to only listen for queries on the local 127.0.0.1 IP and its own 10.0.1.x AirPort IP address. BIND is also configured to forward all unknown queries to my ISP. It's very important to set the basestation's internet tab be set to use the WebSvr Mini's 10.0.1.x AirPort IP address for DNS, rather than your ISP. In this way, all clients that are not manually configured to do so will use the WebSvr mini for DNS and hence the AirPort interfaces on each server for services. I hope I have not lost you yet. When using internal DNS the right way, all local traffic such as Apache, Apple Remote Desktop, MySQL, SSH, etc. are all done locally and fast. So do not forget to tell Apache it can listen on that port.

IP Over Firewire Database Connection ( DbSvr Mini )

The DdSvr Mini is using Apple's IP over firewire capabilities to connect to the WebSvr Mini. I have a patch cable connected to the WebSvr Mini with static IP addresses on both ends using the 192.168.1.0/24 subnet. For convenience each of the 192. addresses ends with the same number as their respective 10. AirPort addresses. This is the 3rd network interface that most people are not aware of. It has limitations but used wisely it can be very useful and fast. In the set up above I am able to keep all database traffic entirely off of my internal switch and localized to that one patch cable. Unless of course, I decide to access the DbSvr Mini using its LAN/AirPort address. Either way, this machine is totally off the public network and quite secure.

Other Services ( Mail and External DNS )

That's what the other unlabeled Mini is for. I have it configured to for mail and public DNS. Postfix is happily listening on its public and private addresses while DNS is only listening on the public IP. This server also does not have an external drive (see below) since I am not worried about its performance since the overhead is quite low for those two services.

Firewall Services

In this setup I did loose the ability to have private addresses for my two public Minis. Hard core network engineers would point out that this would be another layer of security by having a single firewall/router filter and translate packets to these two boxes. I agree and it makes for a nice portable network too. But, I am more than happy running the ipfw service built into OS X Server that is running on each Mac Mini. It is a great stateful firewall and it's not really a configuration nightmare to maintain each one. All in all, it's what I call the RONCO network, set it and forget it. Now on to fixing some of the deficiencies for the Mac Mini.

Improving Hard Drive Performance

nonOne of the first drawbacks to the mac mini is its poor hard drive speed. This can be a real big hit on performance when it comes to hosting a descent web or database server. Thankfully there are alternatives including upgrading the internal drive with a faster form factory laptop drive. However, these can be expensive and if you are like me and have a few Barracuda 7200 RPM 3.5 inch external drives laying around, you could save a lot by purchasing an inexpensive firewire enclosure. I decided on the miniStack from newertechnology since it had the best cooling features and good Mac Mini style. More importantly it sells with a driveless option and comes with firewire cables. A deal for only $69.00 for the entire kit.

I purchased (2) of these, one for each Mini who's performance I was really concerned about, one for the web server and one for the database server. Each of those Macs boot directly from that external drive connected via firewire, the internal drive is used as a back up. Currently I have the DbSvr Mini setup as an RsyncX server and every night each of the 3 servers backs up to its internal hard drive. That's a separate post in itself.

Improving AirPort Signal Strength

I was really surprised to find out how poor the Mac Mini's AirPort signal strength was after you stack something on top of it. My extreme basestation was only a few feet away and the interference from the drive enclosures was so bad that I could not connect two of them that were in the middle of my stack. Thankfully, I was no stranger to taking apart my Mac Mini. In fact, I had installed AirPort cards on all of them since it was cheaper for me to do so and I had an idea! So be warned, the following steps will void your warranty � but if you want to get good AirPort strength and this was a must for me, here is some helpful instructions.

First though, the unordered list below is a parts list with links to Mac-Pro.com. If you are wanting to install an AirPort Extreme card in a Mac Mini, these are the parts you will need. Secondly, my AirPort signal strength "fix" below is by no means a comprehensive step by step for a first timer into the Mac Mini. I highly recommend PBFixIt.com's Mac Mini Take Apart Guide for that.

OK, now to the fun part, Improving your AirPort signal strength. You will need to get a good clean work area setup and take apart your Mac Mini down to the mezzanine board where your AirPort card is installed. Do not actually take that out, we are just going to reroute the cable. Just unplug the AirPort extreme antenna.

My best attempt at a clean work area. Remember to unplug the AirPort antenna from the extreme card.

The most logical place to run the AirPort antenna externally is through the security hole on the back right side. The only other choice would have us drilling holes in the vents and the hood that funnels air out the back of the Mac Mini. Least invasive is good, so I took a dremel and widened that hole up. I made a circular opening the same diameter as the existing width of the security hole.

Use a dremel to open a circular hole in the back. Make sure to use a screw driver to remove any excess plastic.

Now that the hole is wide enough, route the AirPort antenna back through this new opening. Make sure not to cut the antenna cord on the metal shielding.

Route the AirPort antenna back through this new opening. Make sure not to cut the antenna cord on the metal shielding.

After you connect the AirPort antenna back to the AirPort extreme card, make sure that you leave the cable lying next to the slot the drive and fan assembly goes back into.

Make sure that you leave the cable lying next to the slot the drive and fan assembly goes back into.

Here is a picture of the how the antenna cable routes through the small opening that is designed to the left drive and fan assembly slot. This is where Apple intended the AirPort antenna to go. We are just taking a detour.

A picture of the how the antenna cable routes through the small opening that is designed to the left drive and fan assembly slot.

Now we are ready to put the cover back on the Mini, but since we have the AirPort antenna going out the security slot, we will need to cut the metal anchor off. I sliced it right at the bottom, marked in the larger photo.

Cut the metal anchor for the security slot off before putting the cover back on. Cut it flush with the Mini's casing.

I have found it extremely useful to take your putty knife and push on the shielding on the back side of the Mini when you are snapping the cover back on. Otherwise you will just bend the clips when you are pushing it together. And just in case your asking, yes, a putty knife is the standard tool for taking apart a Mac Mini.

Put your putty knife into the back of the Mini to help you nudge the shielding inside the cover when you are snapping it back together.

Here is a final picture of the back of the Minis after they are all back together. Here you can see the AirPort antennas sitting comfortably out the back. No signal interference now!

Here you can see the AirPort antennas sitting out the back of each Mac Minis.

This was the reason I started my network project. I have 3 servers right on my home office desk with all the comforts of a full fledged NOC in less than 1 square foot of space.

Final front view of 3 Mac Mini server right on my home office desk wiht all the comforts of a full fledged NOC in less than 1 square foot of space.

That's it! If you have any questions, please let me know. Or perhaps, maybe you have some ideas on what I could work on for version two of the network?

chocobanana

  HOMEPAGE  | February 10th, 2006 at 05:13 PM
chocobanana Hey! Nice website. You're definitly a CSS coding expert. Did you ever consider writing a tutorial about it? Cheers

Ken Collins

  HOMEPAGE  | February 11th, 2006 at 11:59 AM
Ken Collins There are way too many CSS turorials already and I'd rather stick to the less talked about subjects. I learned by watching the CSS tutorials from Lynda.com. These are quite boring but it does give you foundation from which to experiement.

cmf

  HOMEPAGE  | February 11th, 2006 at 01:00 PM
cmf Thank you for a very informative article. Enjoyed the rest of your site too. One thing though: there's a recurring misuse of the contraction "it's" in place of the correct possessive adjective "its". I only mention it because the same error occurs on your swissdisk.com site ("Not even SwissDisk or it's employees..."), and I thought you'd want to definitely fix that one.

Ken Collins

  HOMEPAGE  | February 11th, 2006 at 01:51 PM
Ken Collins But thank you very much for pointing that out. I will start to update those right away.

Dan

  HOMEPAGE  | February 11th, 2006 at 04:28 PM
Dan Whilst on the subject of grammar..... if we're correcting its/it's then surely a split infinitive also needs pointing out :-) 'definitely want to fix' perhaps? Very good article by the way!

Ken Collins

  HOMEPAGE  | February 11th, 2006 at 05:03 PM
Ken Collins Thank you for that, you made my day!

Fred

  HOMEPAGE  | February 11th, 2006 at 08:29 PM
Fred I'm just curious: from the final setup photo it looks like you've got a Linksys wireless gateway/router rather than an actual Airport Extreme Basestation(TM). Especially considering the close physical proximity of all the components, why did you chose to use wireless networking rather than hardwired 100baseT Ethernet? I understand using the WiFi basestation for your laptop, but not at all for networking. Plus, a couple of lengths of Cat-5 is a heck of a lot cheaper than Airport modems. I really don't understand your choice of (max) 54 Mbps 802.11g over (max) 100 Mbps ethernet. And switches will work better than WiFi no matter what.

Ken Collins

  HOMEPAGE  | February 11th, 2006 at 08:41 PM
Ken Collins Fred, I've seen this question pop up before. The network diagram at the beginning does show that the 100baseT ethernet ports are being used. These are the public interfaces. The Airport Extreme cards are only used for the internal LAN so that I do not have to route my administrative traffic to those public interfaces on the ethernet ports. All local traffic stays on the LAN/AirPort using internal DNS.

Michael

  HOMEPAGE  | February 12th, 2006 at 06:56 AM
Michael "give you foundation to experiement from." should read " give you foundation from which to experiement." ...but on a serious note: this is one of the best posts on the subject, home networking- not split infinitives- and it is great stuff. Thank you very much for such great instruction and please keep up the good work!! Best regards from NYC...

Pikemann Urge

  HOMEPAGE  | February 12th, 2006 at 10:14 AM
Pikemann Urge Soon after the mini was released I had the idea that someone should do something like this. I'm very enthusiastic about low current, compact computers whether on the desktop or in the server room. The less noise and energy consumed the better, even if some performance is lost. Next step: supercomputer mini cluster. :-D

Anonymous

  HOMEPAGE  | February 12th, 2006 at 11:03 AM
Anonymous I guess my only comment is that the wireless backend opens up a can of worms. If I were to do this I would take that Linksys you have sitting around and throw DD-WRT or Sveasoft images on them and build a couple of non-routed VLANs. Then to get from your public side to the WebSvr Mini add a USB Ethernet device and keep the IPoFirewire connection as the backend. I know -- it's not straight up out of the box that way, but... The time that would be spent hacking up that Mini might be better offset spending $28 on a USB Ethernet device (say a USB100M from Linksys). With a CCNP and CISSP background, I would just never be able to justify an operations platform running wireless for dedicated services. But... Just my $0.02. Great article though, images and page design rock! --Dave

Anonymous

  HOMEPAGE  | February 12th, 2006 at 11:08 AM
Anonymous One more thing... Your IP Over Firewire Connections - (192.168.1.0/25 Addresses), should be on a /30 network. ;) Net: 192.168.1.0 /30 Hosts: 192.168.1.1 & 1.2 / 30 BC: 192.168.1.3 /30 Since they are communicating just with themselves. I realize it's a point-to-point connection, but if you want to get down to correct networking practice, that's the way to do it!

Ken Collins

  HOMEPAGE  | February 12th, 2006 at 11:53 AM
Ken Collins I've never heard of most of that stuff and I did just do a quick look around on Wikipedia and some product website. Would the wireless "backend" bother you when it is really just a backend for LAN only traffic? I mean there are really only two ways of compromising my internal LAN. Method 1: Hacking past my AirPort basestation from its public interface and wrecking havoc on the LAN which is technically still locked down for passwords, etc. Possible? Method 2: Having someone outside in the bushes or down the street with a Pringles can listening for a WEP password to break into my closed AirPort network. Do people really do this and for what gain, some database files that have an article that they can read publicly on the web? I think the context of the network could play a very reasonable role in what amount of security one employees. But if I have missed something like how vulnerable my AirPort basestation is, I would really like to know.

Lee Salisbury

  HOMEPAGE  | February 13th, 2006 at 12:18 PM
Lee Salisbury Ken, Did you have any problems with your seagate drives fitting? it said that they might not fit in the case. I just bought 4- 300GB 7200 8MB drives and wanted to make sure they fit before i go nab a couple miniStacks. thanks!! lee

Ken Collins

  HOMEPAGE  | February 13th, 2006 at 01:26 PM
Ken Collins Yes, I did have a small problem when putting the drives in. It was an easy fix though. All you have to do is NOT screw the drive to the internal caddy of the miniStack. Since everything is so tight it did not really need to be screwed to that caddy. Hope that helps.

Anonymous

  HOMEPAGE  | February 13th, 2006 at 07:04 PM
Anonymous OK, well... My point is that if it is a server platform the wireless solution (in my mind -- this was just my opinion, no flaming here) would just not be a good idea. Take for example your backend doing SQL transactions. Are you sure that all of these are done via a safe transport? Maybe SSL for starters? What about SQL injection vulnerabilities if that wasn't the case? Secondly -- I know that you're solution is geared to SOHOers, and not a secure NOC environment -- I've been there. I'm probably overly anal about security because of my job. I work in the defense industry for a major contractor and I end up nitpicking the details out of air defense systems. Ultimately, I posted the comment about the wired local LAN for ideas to move towards your version 2. I think the article was great and you made use of everything out of the box (with the exception of hacking that pretty little Mini) ;) One last thing... WEP? Are you friggin' nuts? ;) LOL, J/K. Your Airport should support WPA2. I also realize that many-o-many public databases are sitting in the clear on vulnerable platforms. The thing is -- there are so many great tools out there that are very convenient to use. Do you really know who your neighbors are? ;)

Richard5

  HOMEPAGE  | February 14th, 2006 at 10:53 AM
Richard5 Just wanted to let you know that this was very informative (even with the spelling mistakes..). I'm trying to setup something similar but started with just one mini and will see where I end up. I'm documenting as much as I can so others can use the info to setup their on server. Got mail, web and database services running and I'm curently playing wth spamassassin. I'll be following your efforts on this... maybe I can learn something... who knows.

Ken Collins

  HOMEPAGE  | February 14th, 2006 at 02:13 PM
Ken Collins And good luck with your SA configuration. One thing I've found very useful is configuring postfix is the live blacklist feature. In the OS X Server Admin, there is a feature for this and I have my mail server set to use Spamhaus as a real time blacklist. I use sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org in mine. If you are configuring postfix by the CLI, I you can just add smtpd_client_restrictions = permit_mynetworks refect_rbl_client xbl-xbl.spamhaus.org permit

Tim O.

  HOMEPAGE  | February 15th, 2006 at 02:46 PM
Tim O. This is a incredible setup, I have to say. What software are you using to run it all, though? Are you using Mac OS X Server for all three? At it's lowest price, that's $500 per box and it seems like a superfluous expense seeing as most of the software you could ever want is available open source. This site is awesome, thanks.

Ken Collins

  HOMEPAGE  | February 15th, 2006 at 07:33 PM
Ken Collins Good question and your right, running OS X Server on the lot does not make sense. I only have that on the Mini that handles mail and external DNS. The other two are client machines that run Apache2 copied from Apple's /opt directory and PHP 5 (entropy.ch) and MySQL 4. Thanks.

Jared Ferguson

  HOMEPAGE  | February 15th, 2006 at 09:07 PM
Jared Ferguson I'm very close to wanting to set up server on a Mini. Do you have a tutorial on how you did this? </Jared>

Lee

  HOMEPAGE  | February 15th, 2006 at 09:26 PM
Lee Hey, just got my 4- 300GB drives and got the lil sucker up and running no probs. thx for letting me know that they fit! cheers, lee ___________________ www.UnitOneNine.com

Bilbrey

  HOMEPAGE  | February 18th, 2006 at 09:22 AM
Bilbrey Ken, It is not surprising to have poor wireless performance when you block the top of the Mac Mini. The openings in the top shield are the only 'holes' for the Airport and Bluetooth signals to escape the 'faraday cage' that encloses the Mac Mini. In fact, we warn that setting things on top of the Mac Mini, or otherwise blocking the wireless signal can result in reduced wireless performance. My point is you state "...if you want to get good AirPort strength and this was a must for me, here is some helpful instructions." and this is true only if you plan to block the wireless access points on the top cover. Otherwise, the Mac Mini has very good wireless performance. Since you have extracted the antennas from the system, you may wish to cover the openings in the top shield with copper tape to prevent either radiated emissions or susceptibility to noise. Other than that, it is pretty cool what you are doing with the Mac Mini. Brett

Ken Collins

  HOMEPAGE  | February 18th, 2006 at 01:46 PM
Ken Collins Well who ever you are, I'm glad your not in my bushes :) I did look around and noticed that my AirPort does support WPA2 Enterprise. I could switch that over for better security, I do not think it would hurt. Thanks for the eye openers!

Ken Collins

  HOMEPAGE  | February 18th, 2006 at 01:50 PM
Ken Collins That is a very good point Brett. I should have stated that "for me" I was not willing to set all the Minis up with nothing on top of them, otherwise they would all have great performance. I do think if you are looking at the mini's as servers this is worth it. For instance take a look at Perth Concert Hall in Scotland's setup. I found this from the Mac Mini Big Ideas page on Apple's site. About the "faraday cage", that's a good point too. What material should I use?

Mac Dream

  HOMEPAGE  | March 12th, 2006 at 11:11 PM
Mac Dream Well done!!!! That's great!!!

marios

  HOMEPAGE  | March 31st, 2006 at 09:44 AM
marios I'm wondering what would be the best network solution, for not having the win boxes allow direct access to the rooter, but rather having a macmini inbetween,the rooter doesn't have advanced features, and the IP isn't static as well, I've seen an article about this recently but now I couldn't find it. regards,

anonymous

  HOMEPAGE  | April 7th, 2006 at 12:01 PM
anonymous Wav.. this is amazing setup.. very powerful inexpensive and very secure.

Smuth

  HOMEPAGE  | April 7th, 2006 at 05:39 PM
Smuth Cool but wouldn't a G4 tower off Ebay for $175-$200 do it just as well and extra NICs are like $10. I run 1 with 3 Ethernets and wireless, it runs DNS, Windowz file sharing, firewall, and puts up a webpage for the open wireless to the public in the DMZ, all for less than $250.00. I have both a wired and wireless DMZ plus a safe local net. If I had a mini I'd use it to drive the TV and audio around my house.

Basil

  HOMEPAGE  | April 10th, 2006 at 06:03 PM
Basil If the mini has only one FireWire port, how did you manage to use IP networking over FireWire between the database and web servers while also plugging in FireWire hard disk expansion boxes? Are you daisy-chaining the networking and hard disks?

Ken Collins

  HOMEPAGE  | April 11th, 2006 at 05:51 AM
Ken Collins That is correct and it worked surprisingly well. It will have a performance hit at some point but honestly if the WebSvr => DB load get over a 10 megabit connection which is nothing for firewire, then I can think about rethinking things. That 10 number is untested too, I'm sure the firewire (network) traffic can go alot higher.

noskcaj

  HOMEPAGE  | May 6th, 2006 at 07:56 AM
noskcaj There's no reason why he should use a /30 for a machine to machine lan connection. We're talking about what amounts to a cross-over style connection. If you want to categorize this as a point-to-point, I won't even argue with you. Using a /30 in a private network like this is unnecessary. In fact, it complicate the scenario. If a point-to-point internet, or wan, connection was setup by a provider, and they were assigning many networks to their various customers, using a /30 would be very appropriate, but not in such a small network like this.

reeses

  HOMEPAGE  | June 4th, 2006 at 02:17 PM
reeses This may or may not be a question you can answer, but you're the only person I remember who has tried something similar that blew up for me. For various reasons that would bore most, I wanted to connect my old PowerBook to my Mini to transfer some large files back and forth, hoping that it would be faster than through my cheap Gig-E switch. It worked fine, but then something odd happened. I have about four firewire drives hanging off of the Mini, and the PowerBook mounted one of them. At that point, neither machine could do anything with the drive. I suspect it may have had something to do with the drive spinning down, going to sleep, and then being reawakened with two machines on the FW bus, but that's just a guess. Have you had this problem with your two IP/FW nodes? Have you heard of anyone having this problem? If so, do you have any suggestions on avoiding it in future? Thanks!

Ken Collins

  HOMEPAGE  | June 6th, 2006 at 04:31 PM
Ken Collins Hey there, I am a big fan of doing things that would bore most :) Sadly, I have not heard of your issue before. I assume that you were using the "T" key on boot up to toggle the PowerBook into firewire disk mode? Once that happens, it should just act as another drive in the firewire chain and that you are saying that the PoweBook drive is no longer usable? Have you tried resetting the PMU or PRAM? If those do not work try resetting the NVRAM in OpenFirmware by doing Command-Option-O-F keys at startup, which brings up the Open Firmware command line interface the the command reset-nvram should do it I think.

reeses

  HOMEPAGE  | June 8th, 2006 at 10:26 PM
reeses My apologies for not explaining the topology accurately. I didn't boot the PowerBook into firewire drive mode -- rather, I wanted to use it to fake screen-spanning using Synergy2. Since I can't drag windows back and forth between screens "shared" in this way, I wanted a fast way to copy over some video files to watch on the PowerBook while I worked on the Mini. So, basically, I had the Mac Mini and the PowerBook connected via FireWire across the Cinema Display, which was acting as a FireWire hub. (It has a huge mega-connector for USB, Firewire, and DVI.) Off of the other port on the Cinema Display FW Hub, I had a chain of four (now five) firewire drives, all mounted under the Mini before I even attempted this. Basically, it's similar (as I understand it) to your connection between your WebSvr and your DBSvr, but there are 0 drives (other than the internal) hanging off the PowerBook and several hanging off of the Mini. You can see the physical layout compared to the logical view. Yeah, it's gross, but it was giving me slightly higher throughput than my gig-E switch until I turned off a few other devices on the same switch (I was taxing the already weak switch). What happened is that, after a while of using the machine, I suddenly noticed that one of the drives in that long drive chain was mounted under both the PowerBook and the Mini. I had a nervous feeling about this that was confirmed when I noticed that neither machine could access the drive. My problem would manifest itself in your environment, say, by the WebSvr mounting the DBSvr's firewire drive, or vice versa, unless I misunderstand your diagram.

Anonymous

  HOMEPAGE  | October 27th, 2006 at 03:35 AM
Anonymous Nice looking site. Pity ie7 has a problem with the top bar

Ken Collins

  HOMEPAGE  | November 6th, 2006 at 01:55 PM
Ken Collins Pity you have to use a PC :) But thanks for the heads up, this was a simple CSS fix.

Dinesh

  HOMEPAGE  | May 2nd, 2007 at 06:17 PM
Dinesh Very nice setup! looks great... I want one of those NOW ;)

jams

  HOMEPAGE  | November 5th, 2007 at 08:30 AM
jams Very nice article. Not to sound like a fool, but what's the other piece of hardware you have in the system? I'm referring to the two items sandwiched between the three minis. I can't see any reference to it in the article... (must be blind). :) - james

Jams

  HOMEPAGE  | November 5th, 2007 at 08:33 AM
Jams Ok, I'm a blind fool. found it. haha.