Thin Clients

[Bill Campbell]

On Fri, Nov 16, 2007, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
>On Fri, Nov 16, 2007 at 09:29:13AM -0800, Bill Campbell wrote:
>> The biggest issues I see with dumb serial terminals are running
>> cables if they're not already present and/or support for
>> reasonable serial multi-port boards on current operating systems.
>
>You can fit a serviceable serial circuit down a TIA 568B wire run;
>terminal servers are cheap, used.

Certainly one can run serial over standard cat-5 internal wiring.
I have a couple of boxes of adapters I've made from RJ-45 to
DB-25 just for that purpose.

I do have customers in facilities where *ANY* cabling is a major
PITA, and wireless is far easier and less expensive to set up.

>> I have a stack of old Specialix hardware in my back room, but no
>> current hardware supports ISA boards today.
>
>Indeed.
>
>Thank ghod we shifted from Intelliport to Intelliserver early.
>
>Buy used Pentium-2 motherboards, and use Linux to build terminal
>servers out of them.

Buy them?  I have a room full of them :-).  I don't know how easy it is
though to find CPU fans and such, or replacement AT power supplies which
are often the achilles heel of these systems (as opposed to cheap,
exploding capacitors on newer main boards).

Ten years ago we were building and deploying diskless Linux stations for
data entry use (originally booting off SCO OpenServer systems).  We moved
away from them mostly because keeping the server side configured was more
trouble than it was worth, and it was easier to deploy stand-alone Linux
machines, particularly when Frys and others started selling them witn Linux
installed for under $200USD that we could just plug in and go.

About two years ago we started replacing old Linux diskless work stations
with Mac Minis, plugging them into the existing keyboards and monitors with
USB/PS2 adapters.  The customers really like them as it's easy for them to
use with the existing applications, and they get pretty GUIs for web
browsing, e-mail, and other applications which weren't all that great no
the old systems.

Bill
--
INTERNET:   bill at celestial.com  Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
URL: http://www.celestial.com/  PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
FAX:            (206) 232-9186  Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820; (206) 236-1676

There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not
want merely because you think it would be good for him.  -- Robert Heinlein