[K12OSN] RE: 486 thin client

[David H. Barr]

Check with your local Goodwills and Refurbishing outfits. They typically
have a MULTITUDE of ~p133 machines sitting around that they'd gladly
give to you, especially if you were going to use them for something like
this. You might have to spring the $5 for a 100x NIC, but those can be had
for the cost of shipping sometimes, as well.

-dhbarr.

PS: My lab is built of exactly such machines... 64mb (16MB x 4).


Around ,
Sean () wrote:
> 486's as thin clients are problematical. They work, but usually are
> short on memory, and the video is slow. Also, the network interfaces
> are usually 10 Mb, which hurts a lot. The rule of thumb for a good
> thin client seems to be 64MB RAM, 100Mb network, and PCI video card.
> Some high end 486 machines met this criteria (barely) during the
> transition to pentiums around 10 years ago, but they were rare. If
> you try to use them, you will be spending a fair amount of time
> getting a suitably compiled kernel and getting the video drivers to
> work correctly.        
> 
> Sean Harbour