[K12OSN] Pentium 166 mHz Machines as Clients?

[Terrell Prude', Jr.]

Your IBM 300GL boxes will rock as clients.  I have a room full of 25 
Pentiums with 32MB DRAM.  Some are 166's, some are 233's, and with the 
100Mbps NICs in 'em, the users don't know the difference.  :-)  These, 
like yours, also have the old Soundblaster 16 cards, and yes, sound 
works perfectly on them in LTSP client mode.

As for the overclocking, there is absolutely no need.  A 486-33 is 
sufficient for this task.  Really.  Any Pentium of *any* speed is, I've 
found, overkill for a LTSP thin client.  Not that I'm going to object, 
obviously.  :-)

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

bullet at sc.rr.com wrote:

>Hi:
>
>I just rolled in a handtruck load of IBM 300GL machines that were slated
>for disposal and was wondering how well suited they might be for use as
>clients? They are currently set up with P-166 processors, 64 MB of PC-66 (I
>think) RAM and Old Skool Soundblaster 16-bit sound cards. Got to go look to
>see if the network cards are 10BASE-T or 100, but most stuff around here
>seems to be the latter, so I am hopeful.
>
> I figure there is a good probability that I can successfuly overclock
>these machines at the max 200 mHz the MB will support, or I can buy the
>processors at near-scrap value, whatever. 
>
>Will these things do OK as clients?, What do y'all think? Ive got nine of
>them, and the price was certainly right.
>
>TIA
>-Tom
>Orangeburg, Sunny SC
>  
>