[H-GEN] Diskless boxes for internet access

[Craig Eldershaw]

>I have the opportunity to score a handful of diskless 386s (8M RAM) for a
>very low price, with 10base2 (coax) network cards with boot ROMs for Novell
>networks.
>
>Does anyone know if I could boot them up into Linux from the Novell network,
>and then run some X browser?  Is there a neater way to do it than that?  Any
>ideas appreciated.

Linux can boot from networked server using a boot-rom (you may need a
boot-rom burner - but someone at HB is sure to able to lend one).  It
mounts it's root partition via NFS and handles swap (if necessary) via
swap files on the server.  You can run any linux program which is
stored on your server quite easily - including X.

So give a bit of configuring of the roms and given a boot-server
(probably easiest running Linux too), then the answer is yes.  You can
have all booting up diskless and use them as Xterminals.  Your only
problem is memory.  Running X (albiet in a low VGA resolution) plus one
of the graphical browsers in 8 Mb may well cause problems.  Lynx (which
you said wasn't suitible) would run, but NS might grind a lot - in this
case, said grinding being done on NFS mounted swap files off the server
by all the machines at once - not a nice thought.

Summary answer: Yes it can be done (if you have a server), but check
first how well X plus the browser of your choice tuns in 8 Mb.

Cheers,
	Craig.
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