I agree with the other posters here that running a Multia
without a keyboard causing heat death is B.S.  Having said
that, I've been running a Multia with NetBSD as a firewall
for a year now and have had two heat-deaths.

I was aware of the heat-death problem before I began running
the Multia at all.  I went to an electronics store and bought
some double-sided heat-conductive tape and taped a piece of
PC board (approximately 1.25" square) on the chip that runs
hot.  By doing this, my multias lasted about 6 months in my
air-conditioned room that never goes over 80 degrees F before
they died.

After the second Multia (my backup) died of heat death, I
went ahead and replaced the 74F part with a 74ABI part
(see the mutia FAQ on www.netbsd.org for more info).  While
I was at it, I also noticed that the multia fan has a
thermistor connected to it (yellow wires).  I could find no
mention of this in the FAQ, but I observed that by cutting
it, the fan increases speed (and airflow) by a _large_
factor.  Had I done this in combination with the PC board
heat sink, I could have postponed the heat-death problem
much longer without having to resort to soldering the new
chip in there.

Naturally, I also run my multia in the vertical configuration,
as recommended by the FAQ.

I hope that this may save others the trouble of SMT
soldering.  It's certainly doable, but even experienced
technicians can wind up pulling up traces when they do
it.  I was careful and lucky when I did mine.

P.S.  The thermal conductive tape is from
      members.aol.com/magaland -- I hope that still works.
      The PCB material can be obtained from any Radio Shack.
      Single-sided works fine.

P.P.S.  If you find you must replace the 74F chip, you
        might want to use a dremel tool and cutting disc
        rather than diagonal cutters to cut the leads to
        the old chip.  In my experience, this is less likely
        to pull up a trace.  You need a firm steady hand
        and some patience to do this.  I'd suggest using
        a low speed, too.

--
Bill Dorsey      "The unarmed man is not just defenseless --
dorsey@lila.com   he is also contemptible."  Machiavelli


> -----Original Message-----
> From: port-alpha-owner@netbsd.org [mailto:port-alpha-owner@netbsd.org]On
> Behalf Of Eric.Melville (Exchange)
> Sent: Monday, July 17, 2000 9:21 AM
> To: 'port-alpha@netbsd.org'
> Subject: headless multia
> 
> 
> I'm looking to run this here (post-heat-death) Multia as an NFS 
> server for a
> LAN. There is really no reason to have a monitor and/or keyboard 
> attached to
> it. Has anyone attempted to run a Multia w/o a keyboard? According to
> multiple (linux-related) sources, running w/o a keyboard will blow the
> motherboard (!) I see no mention of this in the NetBSD Multia FAQ. I am
> guessing that someone was running w/o a keyboard and happened to 
> experiance
> heat-death at that time. Can anyone shed some light on this for me?
>