[K12OSN] advice on surplus hardware

John Baillie jbaillie at stmarys-school.org
Fri Jul 29 15:39:20 UTC 2005


On Fri, 2005-07-29 at 08:16 -0500, Petre Scheie wrote:
> John Baillie wrote:
> > On Thu, 2005-07-28 at 17:18 -0600, Ben Nickell wrote:
> > 
> >>I have the opportunity to salvage some old hardware.  I would appreciate
> >>advice on whether any of this is worthwhile for use in  thin clients.  
> >>I'm only interested in it if it is easy or will work out of the box or
> >>could replace a less capable part in another system (network or video
> >>card).  
> >>
> >>Here are the specs. 
> >>
> >>AT power supply
> >>P1 200 MMX processors
> >>96mb of RAM in (6) 72pin SIMMS
> >>3com 905-TX rev B 10/100 network cards with bootrom slot 
> >>(Don't think it will  PXE boot though, doesn't it have to be Rev C to
> >>PXE boot?)
> >>ATI 3d Rage II+ DVD video cards, video ram unknown.
> >>
> >>Does anyone have experience with this hardware?
> >>
> > 
> > Hello Ben,
> > 
> > We started out with the same specs on our first 20 terminals. We used
> > the rom-o-matic boot floppies. The existing video cards were 2MB. We
> > added 8mb pci video cards to them and it made a huge difference.  I just
> > did a quick google and I see they are still selling for about 24.00.
> > Look for Jaton Trident 9880 8MB PCI.
> > 
> > John
> > 
> Can you elaborate on how the 8MB video cards "made a huge difference"; did the terminals 
> seem to run faster (because the screens updated faster) ? Look better?
> 
> Petre

I don't remember them looking any better but they ran faster. I think
the minimum requirement for video is 2MB but it was not satisfactory. I
never compared 4 MB vs. 8 MB so I can't say if it would make a
difference. If the 4 MB works and the boxes in question are saddled with
2 MB like ours were, 4 MB cards can be found cheaper than those 
8 MB Jaton s

John




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