[TriLUG] Dumb Terminals?

[Reginald Reed]

Lisa C. Boyd wrote:
>
> Reggie wrote:
> >I've done exactly what you mention as your first idea and it worked
> >great.  I helped to facilitate a basic Linux class during a NSBE
> >(National Society of Black Engineers, http://www.nsbe.org) regional
> >meeting for collegiates at UNC last year.  We used an existing lab and
> >people telnet'd into my laptop (PIII700, 256M RAM at the time) and ran
> >various commands, even compiling a few things.  The compilation was
> >painful on the laptop mainly due to the horrible disk I/O, but
> >everything worked without a hitch.  A physical server with a decent
> >processor/ram/disk subsystem would be perfect.
>
> Hm. This is an interesting concept also - I was thinking of setting up a
> lab from scratch, but using existing computers may be a
> possibility in some
> situations. I've been looking for an excuse to get a laptop too :)
>
> >The machines you mention are *way* more than enough.  If all you need is
> >telnet or ssh, you can fit everything on a single floppy (either DOS
> >with packet drivers for whatever NIC you choose or a mini-Linux distro).
>
> Cool. All good information to know. So if I were to use an
> existing setup,
> could I conceivably have the computers boot from floppy and not mess up
> whatever is on the computer?

Yep, you certainly good do that.  The biggest thing you'd have to worry
about in that case is what network drivers you'd need.  If you have a simple
setup, you could easily have several drivers on a single floppy to hit the
most common NICs.

> Ah - more information to digest and more possibilities :) Thanks
> Reggie for
> the additional information!

No problem, this is what the list is all about!

--Reggie