[K12OSN] Pentium 166 mHz Machines as Clients?

[Dennis Daniels]

> There was a comment about the hard disks being useless.  If you have the 
> thin clients booting from floppies, then that's true.  
> HOWEVER...floppies have a way of disappearing, so I've cat'ed the 
> Rom-O-Matic floppy image onto the hard disk, just like you would to a 
> floppy.  Works great!  Of course, you can't boot the Windows 98 that was 
> on those computers anymore, but like I care.  :-D
> 
> --TP

What about drivers for older monitors... would that work as well? It 
would be fantabulous to find an easy way to load the all NIC drivers and 
monitor drivers /sound cards onto the hard-drives of these 
'fat-clients'. We've been using NFS installs but a micro-boot installer 
for K12LTSP that would install the drivers needed for the local hardware 
onto the local machine...something automatic? :)

Roughly speaking, I've spent over 100 hours getting 30 nodes running 
with the help of a linux/hardware enthusiast; 200 man hours spent trying 
to get random NICs and monitors to work on an entirely donated classroom 
network.

When I tell teachers on campus they could do the same thing they say, 
"No way! I know how much time you've put in there getting it to work." 
And they're right, with donated equipment getting a network to run is a 
bear. Unless you're a nut or fanatic most would give up trying to get 
LTSP up and running on donated machines.

A plea from a teacher in the treches: make it easier to get older 
machines, random NICS and ancient monitors into use as clients is a good 
thing for schools; something that Aunt Tilly the Teacher, and I, can 
use.   ;)

best
dennis