Old PCS as workstations ... (was: Buying diskless workstations)
Actually I've just had a thought - if there are any schools out there who have large amounts of 386/486 PCs ...
Actual many companies basically 'throw out' any PC that is more than (say) 5 or 6 years old. As long as they can completely disown the PCs (ie will not be liable if the thing blows up and kills someone) then they may just give them away to a good cause ... My company did this, and I was able to obtain a few PCs for basically nothing. We used them as the basis for playing around with Linux clustering within the users group. The problem is obtaining monitors (which I obviously don't need for clustering).
they could quite easily be configured in the same way to produce cheap graphical terminals running from a central server.
I have fiddled with this sort of thing in the past, and the problem is that while it can be done, X is still quite slow. I would be interested to know how X runs when the actual applications are on another machine though ... I would say don't bother with 386, but concentrate on the 486s, and try to use accelerated cards where possible. It would probably be worth trying to salvage lots of machines, and try to get a few decent machines from the lot, with (say) 16 Mb RAM each ? (You need network cards too of course) In theory it should be possible to set up a complete internet lab using this sort of idea, as long as you have a server that has sufficient power to run several copies of netscape on behalf of the clients :-) I would be particularly interested in anyone that has managed to set up a 'lab' using this sort of idea ... Just my thoughts. Kevin. (Northants Linux Users Group)
In theory it should be possible to set up a complete internet lab using this sort of idea, as long as you have a server that has sufficient power to run several copies of netscape on behalf of the clients :-)
In practice too, it works well, you just need lots of RAM on the server. We have about 45 at present, mostly based on 486/50 Compaqs with 12MB RAM and no drives of any sort, Boot ROM. Running Netscape & StarOffice. Server is Athlon 500 with 256M, when a class of 12 is running StarOffice swap goes up to 600MB [1GB allocated] and load average peaks at 50 (once 96): if all start or stop together we are dead, but while steadily spreadsheeting the load is 2 or 3. Machine will need 1GB of RAM to handle class of 20, but at that stage we shall spread the load to 2 or 3 servers, all using NIS & NFS to share filestore/passwords from another machine. Random [distributed] use for Netscape etc over 45 machines works fine: the problems occur if more than two or three machines are starting or stopping apps at the same time. We have sixty more machines in next year's provisional budget at 15K: price of 250 per machine is made up of 50 for base unit, mouse, KB, network card, ROM 50 for network infrastructure 150 for screen though I think I'll be adjusting it to 50/75/125. Setup needs a top-level Unix guru (not me - it's who I know that counts). Machines need a minimum of 8MB RAM. 12 is comfortable, 16 means there's almost no swapping to the remote server-mounted swap file. But your guru needs to build an economic kernel, of course. Maintenance needs someone who knows which lead plugs into which socket at the back as 90% of problems are cables falling out & being pushed back into the wrong socket, and yes, I have been called out to fix one that needed the on/off switch moved to "on". Our oldest discless X terminal was installed in October 97 and is still going strong. -- Christopher Dawkins, Felsted School, Dunmow, Essex CM6 3JG 01371-820527 or 07798 636725 cchd@felsted.essex.sch.uk
participants (2)
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Christopher Dawkins -
kevin.taylor＠powerconv.alstom.com