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

[bp]

Jason Tower wrote:

>because local port access is needed, the thin client approach may not be the 
>best (there are ways to access local ports with a thin client setup but it's 
>probably not worth the effort in this case, especially with dosemu).  so 
>we'll run the app locally on each workstation and use NFS to tie them 
>together for sharing the data, similar to using mapped drives under DOS.  the 
>trick is to avoid moving/breakable parts like hard drives.  so instead of 
>booting from a HD, set up the workstations with network booting (etherboot, 
>PXE, whatever) and load the OS that way.  that should provide the best of 
>both worlds - local running environment for the DOS app, centralized data 
>storage, and no moving parts on the workstations.
>
>jason
>  
>
That sounds like a great solution if the number of POS systems was 
higher.  But I think that'd be missing the goal here.

That goal was to increase the reliability of the POS systems without 
making it any more complicated.  For a store with 2 POS systems.

No one there has any Linux understanding nor even a basic dos/windows 
education.  My original plan was to make the second slave POS system a 
diskless w/s with print capabilites and upgrade the master Windows 
system with new hd's using hw RAID to improve fault tolerence.  As much 
as I'd like the idea,  I don't think a linux-only shop idea would go 
over real big.  Somebody there or on the support line has to be able to 
get  at least one system backup quickly if something goes down.

So, would dosemu access to LPT1 pretty much nix me from using a thin 
client scheme?

-bp