donated computers lab setup

[Ric Moore]

On Fri, 2006-12-29 at 10:39 -0600, Chris Mohler wrote:
> > Good Will Industries used to slap FC3 on theirs, in Roanoke VA. Great
> > people to do so. They'd sell an entire outfit for $100. I doubt FC5 or
> > FC6 would install though. Happy New Year to you, too. Ric
> >
>  I've taken to calling our local GoodWill "IllWill" instead, as they
> just chuck 90% of the donated hardware into the trash, and threaten to
> call the cops when I dig it out.  The *big* stinker is that they cut
> whatever cords they can get their little paws on, so I end up leaving
> most of the monitors...
> 
> I've written to corporate a couple of times and never gotten a reply.
> 
> Back to the OP - I also recommend LTSP.  I have a pile of "garbage"
> P1s and P2's that work just fine as terminals.  Once you have the
> server set up, adding another terminal is as easy as determining the
> NIC's chipset and spitting out a boot floppy a la rom-o-matic.net.
> 
> One major caveat: sound.  In theory, it works.  In practice, there's
> too much lag.
> 
> Chris

BTW, I had a similar setup in Beckley WV, using 16 XT's and 386's as
dumb  terminals. Someone donated two Dickens Terminal Servers and I just
ran DOS on those machines and Qterm for text logins at 9600 baud. People
could use Pine and email to the internet just fine or play MUD. That was
back in the day when a 486 with 32 megs of memory was considered huge. I
had 16 terminals and 8 modems. Worked like a charm and was plenty fast
in text. Look where we are now. <sigh> Ric
 
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