[H-GEN] Diskless boxes for internet access

[Christopher Biggs]

Steve Pinel <spinel at ssc.qld.edu.au> moved upon the face of the 'Net and spake thusly:

> I would like to tap the accumulative wisdom and experience of all you HUMBUGers.
> 
> (Hello Ray, 'tis I, brother-in-law of Steve D)
> 
> 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.
> 
> I am planning on using the machines as Internet access (WWW) machines in my
> school, say in the library and staff rooms.  The original plan was to boot
> up  in Dos from the Novell server, and run something like Arachne.  Anyone
> know of any other Dos based graphical Web browsers?  Lynx is no good.  Must
> be bright and colourful for the kiddies, or they'll just go outside in the
> sun and play football or something.

Inferno?  

Inferno is Lucent Technologies' (formerly Bell Labs), outgrowth of the
tiny OS "Plan 9 from Bell Labs".   It (inferno) is an OS and
web-browser designed for "internet applicances".

> 
> The only problem being that i don't have any DOS licenses floating around
> that I could use, and the cost of them would probably be close to that of
> the machines themselves, if not more.

OpenDOS from Caldera.


This could be done under Linux, of course, but not with Netscape.
Netscape is such a bloatpig that you'd need gruntier clients or a way
big compute server to run the apps.

Mosaic, perhaps, or the Linux Inferno again.


--
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--- Christopher Biggs - Stallion Technologies - chris at stallion.oz.au ---
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