[Lancaster] folly machines.

[Andy Baxter]

Ken and I did a bit more work on the machines today - we now have three of the 
tiny machines with Xwindows running under SuSE, and working network cards. 
The network cards are the Realtek NE2000 clones. All on io=0x300, irq=10. All 
the machines are set up to halt on ctrl-alt-del. Thanks to Ken for having 
done most of the work on this.

I talked to Taylor about his ideas for the room, and he was saying maybe have 
three machines set up permanently, running off the Dell X server, plus some 
more in the cupboard to bring out for workshops etc., so at the moment I 
reckon the priority is to work on getting the machines we have running 
already configured as well as possible, rather than building or installing 
any more.

Things that still need doing, if anyone has the time:

- have a look at the X server machine, and get the terminals working with 
this.
- DHCP would be a good idea probably, especially if we want to be able to put 
other machines in the room sometimes - atm they are on static IPs 
192.168.0.51-53
- maybe look at how user accounts and file storage are going to work, for 
people who want their own accounts. Any suggestions?

There's another meeting coming up week after next, so maybe we could talk then 
about ideas for how to have the network set up. One possibility would be to 
have a machine without a monitor in that room as a file server, ideally with 
a CD burner in it (could mount this as a network block device, to be accessed 
from the Xserver), so people using the room have some way to write to 
removable media. It would also be good if there was a way to get files on and 
off this over the network, so people with home computers can move stuff to 
and fro.

andy.

-- 
Please don't send me html mail or un-notified attachments. These will be 
automatically filed under 'probable spam' unless I'm expecting an email which 
hasn't come.
If you do need to send an attachment or html mail, put [attachment] or [html] 
in the subject line.
Thanks, andy.