Nostalgia: A look back at the Netgear ND520 NAS (1999)

[Terry Kennedy]

As part of updating my web site and posting new server pictures, I ended up parroting my "... a real turkey (slow, buggy, etc.) and was withdrawn from marketing by NETGEAR within a year or two of its introduction." description of the ND520, which I've been saying in one form or another for well over 15 years now. Since I actually still had one of my ND520 units from back then, I decided to do an in-depth anlaysis of the design (hardware and software) to see if I was being unduly harsh in my criticism of it.

The hardware is actually quite reasonable for its time. The only thing I'd quibble with is the choice of the Realtek RTL8139A Ethernet controller. A number of changes were made after the board was designed, either to reduce cost or because it was re-targeted for use in a lower-end server. In particular, the memory capacity was reduced from 2 * 256MB DIMMs to 1 * 16MB (with the second socket removed), the cache RAM (external to the CPU on this generation of hardware) was omitted, and disk support was dropped from 4 IDE drives to 1.

The software, well... not so much. But it did reflect the cutting edge back in 1999 - Linux 2.0.36 and Samba 2.0.3. Unofrtunately, these were hidden behind a web interface that didn't do much, even when it worked, and there was no support for a real console, either serial or video (the cable in the above picture just connects to the front panel LED board).

I did manage to read the ND520's disk drive using a modern system (nothing useful on the network share) and was able to boot the drive on a not-so-modern system (Dell PowerEdge 750), but there was no new information on the console (I did eventually get a login prompt). Given that the box only does SMB1, and a primordial version of it at that, I put the disk drive back in the ND520. Maybe I'll revisit it again in another 15 years.

Read my whole article here.

 

[Patrick]

Great read. Would have been a great STH main site article if you ever wanted to do something like that.

 

[Terry Kennedy]

Great read.

Thanks!

Would have been a great STH main site article if you ever wanted to do something like that.

Hmmm. Maybe I should dig it out again and see if I can get an old Windows 2000 client to actually "see" the ND520. I could also try to upgrade the RAM (probably just to 256MB, as soldering in a second DIMM socket would be silly) and install some more modern appliance software on it. I doubt it is worth trying to populate the cache RAM, even if I could find the parts. Of course, at the end of the day this is still a 200MHz-ish Pentium class box and would likely be outperformed even by slightly-less-old, slow units like the Linksys NSS4000. And the NSS4000 has a console port (and I know the factory root password for it).

 

[T_Minus]

I found some old NetGear stuff in my basement, I think I just chucked it...
Nothing too exciting (for me at-least) about old 100Mbit switches an such

 

[Terry Kennedy]

I found some old NetGear stuff in my basement, I think I just chucked it...
Nothing too exciting (for me at-least) about old 100Mbit switches an such

You need a better class of basement:

Not my basement, but a data center in NYC that was closing. If a colo tenant was un-contactable and hadn't pair their bill in over a year, their equipment was left when the place closed in September 2013. I got permission to go in there with a couple 40-foot trailers (which is so much fun in downtown Manhattan on a weekday) and pick what I wanted. I got some Dell PowerEdge R710s and PowerVault NX3100s, many of which were still under Dell warranty. Most of the stuff, like you see in the above picture, went to a responsible recycling place that either fixes them and donates them to worthwhile organizations or parts them out and sells the parts. You can see a HP 10GbE switch, some Cisco 7206VXR routers, and a variety of servers in the dumpsters.