XTerms + DEC stuff + misc available (Cambridge, UK)

From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk_at_yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Thu Jul 1 11:13:42 2004

On Thu, 2004-07-01 at 13:47, Rob O'Donnell wrote:
> At 11:26 01/07/2004, Jules Richardson wrote:
>
>
> >Still hoping somebody wants some Xterms! I think everything else has now
> >found a home (unless anyone *really* wants an old dot matrix printer!)
>
> I'd take one or two, if you or somebody can arrange shipping (to Salford,
> UK, I'd cover costs), just to play with. I have no use for all of them
> though! Which are the best sort to have?

Well I've seen them now today. There's a big stack of HP ones which look
*old*. The Entria's still there, then there are a couple of NCD ones
that look to be 88k units. What I didn't see was any screens for them
:-/

I'll drop the chap an email and see whether there are displays lurking
elsewhere.

I have completely filled up the car with other stuff that was there
though - there were a few oddball Cromemco cards and manuals for
instance which looked worth saving. I need to unload the car and do a
proper inventory, as I was just throwing stuff into piles to take as
time was tight. Watch this space as save for a few items that are going
to the museum, the bulk of it I just need to find homes for :-)

> Back in the day, after having seen one, I always used to
> want to make up a video wall out of BBC monitors (Microvitec Cubs are
> nicely stackable) but never had anything to drive it with, nor enough
> monitors! Maybe that's a project for somebody, assuming the "16 BBC type
> monitors" are of this sort.

Now you've spooked me. A 16 screen video wall is the plan as a museum
exhibit - bar a few last minute arrangements I've got 16 Cubs lined up
that I can have from another source. I've been chatting about this over
on the BBC mailing list for a few weeks!

My plan is to Econet 16 BBCs together in a rack, with something
controlling them. Of course the hardware (and network!) is too slow for
anything like moving video, but I'm thinking I can get away with hooking
a video camera up to the controlling machine and let the public take
still captures.

Running numbers through my head, it seems to be a viable project anyway.
Just a case of finding the time to actually implement it! (It started
out as a simple scrolling message system, but then it had occurred to me
just how stackable Cubs are too! :-)

> Microsoft's "remote desktop" under Windows XP seems to manage to send sound
> to the remote client (as long as you use the right version of the client)
> so I assume it must be possible.. Just needs implementing under X by
> somebody..

Well the other option is to network-boot Linux with a diskless PC. Given
the low cost of RAM these days and the speed of networks, I assume I
could just have a RAM disk of a few MB to hold the OS once running, and
that could contain all drivers for the local sound card (so it's
actually a diskless workstation, rather than a remote X display).

I just don't have the time to put something together, and I haven't seen
a good tutorial document that says how to do this (I've got a EPROM
burner of course, but I have no idea what I need to actually put in the
EPROM for a network card, or what I do in terms of making an OS image
file on the server which is presumably then transferred to the client by
the code in the network boot ROM)

cheers

Jules
Received on Thu Jul 01 2004 - 11:13:42 BST