From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Jan 7 19:05:58 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id TAA16491 for questions-outgoing; Wed, 7 Jan 1998 19:05:58 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions) Received: from mail1.realtime.net (mail1.realtime.net [205.238.128.217]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id TAA16472 for ; Wed, 7 Jan 1998 19:05:50 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jktheowl@bga.com) Received: (qmail 22924 invoked from network); 8 Jan 1998 01:19:07 -0000 Received: from zoom.realtime.net (HELO zoom.bga.com) (root@205.238.128.40) by mail1.realtime.net with SMTP; 8 Jan 1998 01:19:07 -0000 Received: from barnowl.roost.net (apm5-172.realtime.net [205.238.146.172]) by zoom.bga.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) with SMTP id TAA29247; Wed, 7 Jan 1998 19:19:02 -0600 Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 19:23:19 -0600 (CST) From: John Kenagy X-Sender: jktheowl@barnowl.roost.net To: Ben Pepa cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Diskless X Terminals In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk I thought about it, but a $40 200MB drive from my dealer that I put in an old 386SX was too easy to turn down. The setup was easy. Install FreeBSD over the LAN, configure just enough OS and X to start things, set up NFS (and NIS for the more energetic) and presto! Now, the 386 is... leisurely. But given the particular application, it's OK. Your 486 machines should do fine. The bios is not of concern, FBSD only needs it to find the disk then it takes over. The Bios in the 386 only sees 40MB. Good Luck! John On Mon, 5 Jan 1998, Ben Pepa wrote: > Hi; > > Does anyone use diskless X-Terminals? We have about 10 486/33Mhz that have > no hard drive but a single floppy. Their BIOS can't handle the newer 1.2GB > disks, so we were planning on converting them to X-Terminals (we can't find > 500MB hard drives anymore). Does anyone have a 486/33Mhz running X? Is > it very slow? They will all have at least 16MB RAM and some will have 32MB > RAM. We can't do much else with them, and don't want to get the wiring > layed out if it's going to be slow.... > > > Thanks, > Ben Pepa > > > >