On Mon, 22 Feb 1999, Mohler, Jeff wrote:

Cisco routers do intake/output monitoring on the RSP cards. *grin*

If you want to roll your own, for less than the cost of a Cisco!, checkout:

http://www.spiderplant.com/hlt/index.html

The product is called "Hot Little Therm" and its basically a small box with an RS-232 port that handles up to 240 (IIRC) solid state temp sensors. It comes with one sensor - and here is the best part - costs $100. Additional sensors are $15/ea with a 10 foot cord. If you really want to have some fun with this box, you "*need*" to get 5 to 10 probes. It'll drive you crazy just thinking of things (in the computer room etc) to monitor.

So here are the gotchas: This is a toy for Unix savvy developer types. The software that comes with it assumes that you're comfortable with gcc, C code and Unix TTYs etc. If you are, then it'll take you 10 to 15 minutes to hook it up to a tty port and start taking temp measurements.

I'm not saying that you can't use it on another platform etc., but you would need to have some programming skills and be comfortable with getting/putting characters strings on a TTY port.

With the cost of entry of this product being so low, there is no excuse for not monitoring temperature in the computer room, disk enclosures etc. It's also very interesting to corelate disk drive failures to "that A/C problem that happened last weekend" etc.

Usual disclaimers - just a satisfied customer.

Regards,

Al Hopper Logical Approach Inc, Plano, TX. al@logical-approach.com Voice: 972-379-2133 Fax: 972-379-2134