New Cardano full node

After hearing about “Meltdown” and “Specter” I decided to look around for a medium exclusively for Deadalus. Then I came across this little guy and decided to set up a Cardano full node on it:

Car (the one in this picture is an older version)

This is the Intel Compute Stick. The processor inside is an Intel® Atom™ x5-Z8300 or x5-Z8330. According to Intel, this processor is not affected by “Meltdown” and/or “Specter”. (Assuming they didn’t build other backdoors hehe :stuck_out_tongue:)

Here are the specifications:

spec

This is what I did:

First, you need to upgrade the bios and update the drivers: these can be found here https://downloadcenter.intel.com/product/91065/Intel-Compute-Stick-STK1AW32SC

Second, you need to create a Bootable USB (Windows 10 64-bit) with Microsoft Creation Tool. Deadalus Wallet needs the 64-bit version of Windows.

Then you need to switch from the BIOS to the 64-bit version in order to boot the USB. After installing Windows 10 64-bit, update again the drivers. This time with the 64-bit version.

As you can see the Intel Compute Stick has only 32 GB of hard disk space. So in order to run Deadalus, you need to move AppData folder to an external drive (USB, MicroSD etc.) To do this type in explorer %appdata%, then click again on AppData in the explorer bar. You will see three folders: Local, LocalLow and Roaming. Move all these folders to the external drive. To do this: right click --> Properties --> Location. You will see something like this C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local Change here the path to the external drive. Repeat this for the other folders. This will save a lot of hard disk space.

And now you are ready to set up Deadalus Wallet. If you have the Enterprise or Education version of Windows 10, you can activate BitLocker and encrypt your Intel Compute Stick. Do not activate BitLocker on the external drive. It will cause errors.

To be honest I don’t know if this is much safer than having Deadalus on your PC. Most important are the private keys. The wallets are more like a gate. But I like the idea of having a separate medium for the Deadalus Wallet that also has a processor chip that is not affected by “Meltdown” and “Specter”. It is also handy because of its size. I had fun playing with it and wanted to share this with you guys.

So what are your thoughts?

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It looks great. Which encryption algorithm would you choose when activating Bitlocker? The default one (AES)?

For those wondering what are Meltdown and Spectre

AES-256. Probably best one.

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