Re: Debian + PC with multi RS... port -> n x (text dumb terminal + printer)
On Fri, 12 Sep 1997, Joey Hess wrote:
> If you were willing to go with 386 class PC's, you could strip them down to
> a special ethernet card with the kernel in ROM (or, a normal ethernet card
> and a floppy disk drive), a video card, a printer port, and 2 to 4 MB of
> memory (plus keyboard, screen, and printer, of course). That can boot linux
> over the network, and then you could write the POS app in linux.
>
> > What ethernet cards are suitable for a 8088 or 80286?
>
>
> > Will
> > the people for which I will be building the application find good-looking
> > one-year-warranty such outdated machines?
>
> Well, it's possible thay you will be able to find all the parts you need
> new. I'm not sure if unused 286 or 386 chips are still being sold -
> everything else can be bought new, though.
All this stuff just to have a console + printer? Maybe you have more
energies than I do (as I noticed... it was SO KIND of you answering all my
postings, thanks once again)... I mean, it must not run any piece of
application, that's just the job that _terminals_ have to do, and I could
more well concentrate on what's to be done on the main computer, a nice
powerful Linux box, maybe a 2 CPU motherboard... with just a line to init
for each terminal, as you first suggested; no machines booting via
ethernet, no megs ram around, no video cards + displays (maybe not even
all the couple the same models -> different max hor/ver scan frequencies
to deal with) to eventually configure SVGAText for... Mmmmm... Joey, I'm
hearing of $500 terminals (see the WYSE web page) with a centronics port
and just control codes to send output to the display or the printer... It
sounds more clean to me! In case one of them gets burned, you haven't but
to get another and connect it (and chances are that the broken one can be
repaired). I will keep looking for infos in that direction.
Nicola Bernardelli <nbern@mail.protos.it>
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