[Exeter] Looking for old hardware

[Rob Beard]

On 10/10/12 21:33, alex mclennan wrote:
> On 10/10/2012 01:27 PM, Rob Beard wrote:
>> Hi folks,
>>
>> Rick Timmis has been in contact with a pre-school in Exwick who are
>> looking to setup a computer suite similar to the Internet Cafe at the
>> Exwick Community Centre.
>>
>> They're looking for about 6 PCs for the kids to use (the details are a
>> bit sketchy at the moment but I'd guess they're wanting something the
>> kids can play educational games, access educational web sites etc on).
>>
>> I've already put a request out on Freecycle and Freegle in Torbay and
>> Teignbridge and on Facebook to see if anyone has any machines or bits
>> they can donate and I wondered if anyone might possibly have any old
>> computers or bits kicking around that they want to get rid of?
>>
>> I understand the idea is to install another LTSP server.  I figure if
>> the kids are using something like Tuxpaint then it's also probably a
>> good idea to have a printer or two (maybe a couple of old Epson or HP
>> inkjets since the compatible ink cartridges are fairly cheap to get
>> hold of).
>>
>> If anyone has any old printers, networking kit (a gigabit switch would
>> be ideal, or a 100Mbit switch with a gigabit uplink)... I know it's a
>> big ask... then they'd be most grateful.
>>
>> I can collect to a point (I'm in Torquay and don't mind picking stuff
>> up from around Torbay, although I'm not working at the moment and
>> funds are limited so if possible maybe arrangements could be made for
>> stuff to be picked up and dropped off at LUG meets?).
>>
>> Anyway... if anyone can help then they would be great and I'm sure it
>> would be a great way of getting the kids interested in things like
>> Tuxpaint etc from an early age :-) (and maybe it would be a good
>> showcase for parents who have PCs bogged down with Vista and XP!)
>>
>> Rob
>>
> hi all,what sort of spec machines re you looking for.
> alex the noob
>

Hi Alex,

The Exwick Community Centre currently use a few Dell P3 1GHz machines 
with something like 128MB (or possibly 192MB, I can't exactly remember) 
memory.  Rick mentioned about things like flash running slowly (it looks 
like 6 or 7 sessions all running flash hammer the server) so I was 
looking at implementing 'local apps', that is basically we can run 
applications on the clients themselves if they're fast enough.  The 
server does the majority of the work and most applications run on the 
server itself but the idea is things like Firefox and Flash can run on 
the clients themselves.  I've tried it running on LTSP on a VM on my 
laptop (actually Virtualbox running two VMs, one running the LTSP server 
and another as a client) and both Firefox and Flash work really well on 
the client (and that was with only 256MB Ram).

Considering the machines are for a pre-school I'm guessing that the kids 
will want to use things like the CBeebies web site as well as less 
intensive things (Tuxpaint, Tuxtyping etc) and maybe some games 
(Tuxracer comes to mind) so I figure something a bit higher spec might 
be better.

As it happens someone on the LUG list has offered 6 AMD Sempron machines 
with about 512MB Ram each and 17" LCD monitors, so if we can get these 
they might do the job well, but failing that I think maybe something 
around the P4 2Ghz mark with as much memory as we can get hold of :-)

I'm thinking if we are left over with parts or any spare machines maybe 
we can look at upgrading the clients at the Exwick Community Centre too.

Rob