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I have an old powerbook g4 (power pc), which is about to get debian 6 installed on it. I was considering using this powerbook as a home proxy/firewall so that I could get a better grip on iptables, tcp/ip and linux in general.

I understand that this powerbook g4 needs to have two NICs. I have a Dynex (model: DX-E202) PCMCIA ethernet card that could work as the second NIC, but unfortunately there do not appear to be drivers for linux, and I can't use ndiswrapper, as this is a mac powerpc, and I don't have the know-how to write a driver for it.

Do I have any alternatives here, other than buying a different NIC?

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migrated from serverfault.com Apr 17 '11 at 20:31


by the way, i'm trying to do this without spending money, time i can spend, but not money ;) –  Kevin Quinn Apr 17 '11 at 20:18
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2 Answers

Technically you don't need a second NIC to set up a proxy server, you need a second network connection -- NIC is just the easy and sane way to do it. Any hardware which you can finagle into talking from one computer to another can act as a network connection if you spend enough time (but not money) on it. Might not be particularly fast, or stable, or useful, but will give you a much better understanding of networking in general.

In lieu of a proper NIC, and hardware permitting, I would look into PPP over Bluetooth.

Of course, that's assuming I really really don't want to spend the $5-10 on a new card.

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Some PowerBook G4 models have USB ports, if yours does then you might be able find a cheap/used USB ethernet adapter.

Sorry, not free -- but a quick look found a new one in the $8 new range, so with a bit of searching you could probably get something used for $10 including shipping.

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