[K12OSN] advice on surplus hardware

[Petre Scheie]

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