Re: home network: will bo play with potato?
On Tue, Mar 14, 2000 at 09:18:44PM -0600, rich wrote:
> total network newbie here,
>
> I recently acquired a 486dx-33 with 1.4gb hard drive that i want to use
> as an x-terminal to connect to my pentium-200 (which runs potato). Is
> potato appropriate for a 486? I have an old cd of bo that I thought
> would work on the 486, but would I be able to connect to the potato
> pentium?
>
> BTW, is it really even feasible to use a 486 to run X programs like
> wordperfect and Netscape off of my pentium?
Should work fine. I believe this is roughly the configuration of a few
commercial NC/X-Terminal systems.
I was running X servers on low-grade Pentium boxen in a Unix environment
~1995 with no problems. The factors most likely to affect performance
are your system and video memory, and your video card specifically.
Not that I could give you specs on what to choose, but if preformance
was lagging, I'd look there. A fast network card would also probably
be a plus <g>, though even a 10 MB/s card should handle X events on an
uncontested network. Gaming might lag though.
This is actually a really great way to split load between an application
server an the desktop. Driving an X server is a fairly significant
task, likewise, some applications suck cycles. If you can split the
load, a slighlty beefed server can dish out apps to a number of
lightweight terminal systems. By "slightly beefed" -- a contemporary
x86 system with a large memory configuration and SCSI disk subsystem
should be sufficient to handle, say, household activities for 2-6 users
without notable lag.
--
Karsten M. Self (kmself@ix.netcom.com)
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
Scope out Scoop: http://scoop.kuro5hin.org/
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