Re: Older Equiptment

[Michael A Hamblin <michaelh@utdallas.edu>]

On Fri, 11 Dec 1998 EAMorical@aol.com wrote:

> There was something in the other post about, "486's just aren't going to be
> popular running Windows 95. Anyway, there's no sense wasting this old hardware
> that could be put to use". We have two 486's running Windows 95 one dual
> booted with Linux. They run fine.

If you will recall, I said that whole message was rather clunky, although
I'll try to clarify what I meant :)

I have no doubt that your two 486s running 95 are running fine.  I myself
have seen 386-25s operating productivly with only 4Mb of RAM and a 40Mb
hard drive running Windows 95. However very few people would be willing to
try such a thing with their 386s. Certainly it is possible to get these
machines to do work under these situations, but whoever uses those
machines would have to have incredible patience. That is in short supply.

Fortunatly, Linux does quite well on 386s and 486s.  I've seen 386s and
486s replaced by new Pentium machines running 95 and later versions of
apps without any measurable improvement. That's the effect of the bloat
that I'm trying to avoid. Linux just rocks :) You can do more with the
same hardware.

> The reason I'm saying this is that to do
> something effectively one has to determine reality. For the most part it
> appears to me that for individuals and small businesses old computers are
> handed down or end up in swap meets or something. Very few computers from
> these sources end up as donations. I would like to hear other views. For large
> companies the story is different. Once the  computers are depreciated, they
> are candidates for replacement. This leads me to believe that it would be best
> to approach larger companies and find out what they do with their old
> computers. For example see (http://www.edos.org) and look at the messages.
> There is one about computer donations from some company. In another post there
> is the statement, "or someone may know of someone tossing out lots of old
> equipment and needs a tax write-off". Just to clarify there is no tax write-
> off, the computers are already written off. The companies are looking for
> someone to haul the computers away for free and perhaps get the publicity of
> the donation.

While it may be true that companies often have no value in in their old
equiptment, it is also often the case that the machines may still have
value. Corporate departments are doing strange things, like replacing
Pentium 90 machines with P2 machines to run NT and so their Office apps
and Outlook run faster :) Maybe I'm just seeing things weird from living
in Dallas hehehe...

> Next it sounds like you want to set up one computer running
> Linux and connect the others to it. What's not clear is where the Linux
> computer is going to be and more importantly how you are going to connect the
> other computers to it. More information would be helpful. If you intend to
> have N
> modem connections at the same time, you will need N phone lines. If you're
> going to connect them as a lan, you will need them in close proximity.

The server may be configured in any number of ways. For about $1200 US you
could build a nice P2 based machine (no multimedia addons) for a Linux
server. You could include multiple network interfaces to do
firewall/proxy/whatever operatations on a LAN. You can have a bank of
modems connected to a small frame-relay set aside for phone connections
that connect to the server. You could also have bridges connected to the
machine that talk to the "terminals", which are really 286s chatting over
serial lines. I'm just trying to come up with the general options, not try
to say "Well this is the way it has to be done".

Basically what you've got here is a pretty awesome development, at least
the way I look at it. Not even ten years ago there was a machine called
'attctc' in Dallas that was a public access Unix system known publicly as
'killer'. It was an AT&T 3B2 that actually allowed public users to have
shell accounts. Running with 3gigabytes of storage space and an
incomprehensible 32Megabytes of RAM, this sytem took quite a heavy load
and was still quite functional.  At one time it held the largest Macintosh
software archive in the state of Texas.

Nowadays brand new bottom-end machines top this multi-million dollar piece
of equiptment. Also Linux is a lighter OS than SV. If one 30-station lab
were using "terminals", then the server would easily handle the load up to
light computer science course loads.

I'm probably stating stuff you already know :) but if a school will only
allow Linux in use in a server role, then let it be a server :)
One of the great things I love about Linux is it's configurability. If you
want terminals to connect to a Linux server, you have many options, and
you are left to choose the configuration that suits your needs best.

These are some of the situations I could see...

The school would like a way for students without internet accesss to be
able to dial in from home. Solution: set up a Linux server that manages a
bank of modems for dial-in shell connections.

A school has gotten hand-me down 286s with networking functionality, but
are having trouble finding uses for them. One possible solution: set the
286s up as terminals that connect to one or more Linux servers where a
richers set of programs are available.

A school has a couple 386 and 486 'Office' type training labs that are
being upgraded to run the newer 'Office' style packages.  Increased
enrollment has, however, prompted the creation of a new lab for which
there is only a small budget.  A possible solution: Run them all native
(all apps run locally), set them up as text terminals that talk to a
server, turn them into XTerms that connect to a server, or any combination
of these.

A school with a large number of relic Apple II's would like to allow
students to do email but cannot purchase new equiptment. A possible
solution: Set up the Apple's to do serial connections to bridges or
directly to a Linux box as terminasls.

A school connected to the internet is scared of Linux for whatever reason,
however the parents or computer science teachers want their
children/students to have access to the wonderful world of Linux. A
possible solution: Set up a Linux server and do crazy things to connect it
to the Internet, like set it up on Cable Modem (the kind where you have
500kbit uploads, not the modem connection kind).

And of course any combination of the above incomplete list. This also
doesn't take into account 'BBS' style interfaces, server configurations,
various server software packages and their pros and cons, etc.

What I am trying to do is have a list of the resources at hand, including
FAQs, HOW-TOs, etc on how to configure these kinds of setups (does anyone
know how to set up Linux to do dialin connections, or where documentation
is at?) and try to work around licensing issues.

Typing these long messages is driving me nuts :)  I don't want to be
distracting from the the business of XML and coding the gradebook app,
amoung other things... but then again dealing with older equiptment is
going to be a problem.

--
Michael Hamblin            http://www.utdallas.edu/~michaelh/
michaelh@utdallas.edu      http://www.ductape.net/
UTD Linux User Group       TCS HelpDesk (x2911, assist@utdallas.edu)