[TriLUG] Diskless w/s for legacy DOS app?

[Jason Tower]

you're on the right track, the first step is to verify that the DOS code can 
run under linux in emulation mode.  once this is verified, probably the 
easiest thing to do is to set up thin clients to connect the server via ssh 
or telnet.  i've done this sort of thing before, once it gets set up it's 
pretty bulletproof and easy to maintain.  the thin clients can just be any 
old PCs, you don't even need hard drives or cdroms, just a floppy.

it sounds like an interesting little project, i'd be glad to give you a hand 
testing it out and settings things up if you like.

jason

On Wednesday 13 November 2002 11:34, bp wrote:
> My family owns a video store which uses a piece of DOS software.   Every
> so often one of the hardrives or something will go bad on one of the two
> registers.(std. pc)  Lately with the price of hardware so low they have
> decided to invest a bit for reliability.
>
> The DOS software is installed on system A, system B connects via a
> windows share from system A which is mounted as drive M: and launches
> the dos app as m:\dos.exe in a console.  The app prints to a dot matrix
> printer on lpt1 w/o spooling jobs.
>
> So, the linux portion.
>
> I've read linux does diskless workstations well.  Linux does samba quite
> well.  Linux does dos emulation.
>
> So could I wrap up all of this as a no nonsense workstation void of
> breakable bits like hd's & Windows?
>
> I'd like to burn a cd or write a diskette to boot machine B with
> network, samba and dos emulation support.  This would allow us to make a
> dumb workstation with the minimum fuss.  Disk goes bad, just shove in
> another copy of said cd/floppy.
>
> Where do I start?  Is the dos emulation pretty solid?  No unix chars
> going to corrupt the DOS software?  Will dos emulated program be able to
> print to lpt1?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> -bp
>
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