Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Always On
Like most consumer hardware, the Slug has an on/off button. For normal operation, this is fine. But for a home
automation system, which is generally intended to work 24/7 (like the rest of the house), this can cause problems
whenever there is a brief power outage, as the machine then needs to be manually switched back on. Also, if you are
controlling the Slug's power remotely, maybe through a timed X10 appliance module or stand-alone timer, it won't
fully turn on because it needs the button to be pressed.
In the first instance, there are obvious solutions here, such as putting the Slug onto a UPS or keeping it accessible
so you can manually control it. However, these negate the benefits of it being cheap, hidden, and (importantly for HA)
controllable.
You can solve this by invalidating your warranty by performing one of several hardware hacks to ensure the
machine always switches on when the power is applied. These vary from using USB Y-cables in various configurations
to soldering components to the board. All are detailed, with their relative merits online (
www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/
HowTo/ForcePowerAlwaysOn
).
Overclocking
Prior to 2006, all Slugs ran slower than necessary as their CPUs were clocked at 133MHz, despite the chip being designed
to run at 266MHz. This technically meant the original versions were
under
clocked, which means the following hack is
known as
de-underclocking
, rather than overclocking. If you log into your Slug (through
telnet
or
ssh
, depending on
your firmware) and type the following:
cat /proc/cpuinfo
you'll see a BogoMIPS value, indicating the currently speed. If this is within 10 percent of the 133 value, then you
can improve the speed by removing the resistor shown in Figure
2-1
.
Figure 2-1.
The de-underclocking resistor (second from the bottom in the R84 stack). Image from
http://www.nslu2-linux.org/gallery/hardware
released under cc-by-sa
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