[Lancaster] folly machines.

[Ken Hough]

Andy,

Well done with the network cards. Sorry That I had to leave, but I'd 
arranged to collect the two PCs mentioned in my other recent email 
message to the group.

We could use these PCs instead of two of the 'Tiny' boxes. They are very 
clean, but maybe the 'Tiny' boxes are more suited to service as 'dumb' X 
terminals.

DHCP should simplify useage of the network. I have a simple DHCP setup 
that I can use to accommodate existing static IP addresses as well as 
allocating addresses dynamically.

Have a good holiday.

Regards

Ken Hough



Andy Baxter wrote:
> 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.
>