Recently, the router at the gym where I work out has been going on the fritz. It's a D-Link DI-524 so it stands to reason. As the local technology consultant for the gym, I convinced them to allow me to build a m0n0wall box for them.

The issue is that the gym is a small private studio and they are trying very hard to make it look chic and fashionable. To me, this means that they'd rather not have a honking Dell Optiplex G1 like the unit I built a few months ago. I found a solution over in SA's SH/SC forum: The IBM NetVista N2800 8364 Thin Client.

In the thread, a guy from England discussed how he made his unit work. His site has a good write-up on how to accomplish it, including this image where he outlines what is what inside the case. I picked up an 8364 off eBay for $55 shipped.

Dealing with the two BIOS flavors can be a bit daunting if you're not experienced in editing BIOS settings so if you attempt to do this, please make sure you're not dumb. But even if you are, there is a PWD_RST jumper that will restore everything back to the land of lollypops and bikinis.

The issue I'm having at the moment is one that apparently plagues the Ethernet models of the 8364. During the Linux boot process, the screen becomes garbled and the machine eventually locks. As recommended on the aforementioned page, enabling the on-board Ethernet controller seems to solve this problem.

While that was well and fine, a new problem that is undocumented as far as I can tell has emerged. The keyboard I am using to assign interfaces as well as the LAN IP address is not functioning correctly when attached to the thin client. The same keyboard works fine on my server so I know the keyboard is not the issue. Strange characters are entered for every keystroke and always entered twice. It's the oddest thing I've seen in a while. If anyone has any ideas how to work around this, please leave a comment. I'll post an update when I get it resolved.

Now, what did I do with that USB keyboard...