{"id":3188,"date":"2011-01-28T22:05:31","date_gmt":"2011-01-29T03:05:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/?p=3188"},"modified":"2011-01-28T22:05:31","modified_gmt":"2011-01-29T03:05:31","slug":"cf-card-hole-in-netgate-alix2d13-enclosure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/2011\/01\/28\/cf-card-hole-in-netgate-alix2d13-enclosure\/","title":{"rendered":"CF Card Hole in Netgate alix2d13 Enclosure"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This morning when a beta version of pfSense<\/a> on my PC Engines alix2d13-based firewall<\/a> crashed I decided to make it easier to swap the CompactFlash<\/a> card from which the OS runs. While physical access to the card is not normally required to upgrade the OS, there have been a few cases recently where I had to remove the card and image it. After the third time of removing 12 fasteners just to remove the card I decided to follow pfSense developer Jim-P’s example<\/a> cut a hole in my firewall’s enclosure.<\/p>\n

After marking the CF card location in the case and stripping it, only three cuts with a small cut-off wheel were needed to make the long cuts, then the remaining bits of metal were easy to bend out of the way with a flat-blade screwdriver. A bit of quick smoothing and deburring work with small files resulted in a nice, smooth hole through which the CF card easily fits. While the card remains not hot swappable, it’ll be much easier to remove the card should I need to access the card from another machine. Since the card sits a bit inside the face of the enclosure I had to add a tape flag<\/a> to make it easy to remove. Pushing it back in is a little awkward as well, but as this won’t be done much it shouldn’t be a problem. <\/p>\n

Here’s a few photos taken tonight while cutting the hole in the case:<\/p>\n

· After marking the enclosure was clamped to some very dense foam for cutting with a cutoff wheel.<\/a>
\n· More cuts made with the cutoff wheel. After this point the metal was gently bent away and the hole was filed.<\/a>
\n· Looking at the Netgate enclosure from inside showing the nice alignment with the CF card slot.<\/a>
\n· Front view of the Netgate enclosure with a CF card hole cut in it.<\/a>
\n· The CF card fits very nicely in the hole.<\/a>
\n· View from inside showing how well the CF card fits.<\/a>
\n· Because the CF card will not hang out of the slot tape was added to facilitate extraction.<\/a>
\n· CF card placed in the alix2d13 board via the hole in the Netgate enclosure.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now to wait for the next build to come out and reimage my CF card. This build should contain three<\/a> ftp helper<\/a> changes<\/a> that should resolve the issue I had this morning. Hopefully a problem that I had with disappearing certificate authorities<\/a> is also fixed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This morning when a beta version of pfSense on my PC Engines alix2d13-based firewall crashed I decided to make it easier to swap the CompactFlash…<\/p>\n

Continue readingCF Card Hole in Netgate alix2d13 Enclosure<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,13,6,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-acquired-things","category-computers","category-electronics","category-making-things","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3188"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3189,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3188\/revisions\/3189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}