At 17:13 01/07/2004, you wrote:
>[xterms]
>
>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.
Well no worries if they are no good (someone else mentioned software is
needed?? I've never played with an x-term, so was just something else ot
put in the pile of "cool things I should play with someday when I have
infinate time" !
> > 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!
lol. :-) I didn't know, honest! Where is this list, might be of interest
to me. Although this one is about the only mailing list I actually read
daily, out of the several I am subscribed to.
>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.
Sounds good :-) Why not do some simple games too? Something as basic as
'pong' should be easy? or ... I've got a touch-screen for a cub... find
15 more and you can do a "hit the pop-up beastie" game :-)
>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! :-)
16 monitors makes a nice 4x4 matrix - probably what made us both think of it.
> > 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 imagine that would work. I've used several single-floppy linux and unix
distros that work in a similar way (unpack into a ramdisc)
>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)
http://www.etherboot.org/ looks like it may help you here, at least for x86
clients.
Rob.
Received on Thu Jul 01 2004 - 11:56:42 BST