SEUL suggestions and Re: Older Equiptment

[Roman Suzi <rnd@sampo.karelia.ru>]

On Sat, 12 Dec 1998, Michael A Hamblin wrote:

>On Sat, 12 Dec 1998, Roman Suzi wrote:
>
>> Thanks, Michael on your review.
>> However, I have not found the most  obvious  solutions  in  it,
>> which I wish I knew more:
>
>These are the kinds of questions I'm trying to answer :)

For example, at home  I  am  using  two  computers:  floppyless
i486DX-100 (with 1.2 Gb HD ;-) with lots of memory  16  Mb  and
another one K6-200 with not so much memory: 64Mb.

And my poor mans LAN is made of  null-printer  cable  and  PLIP
protocol. Works great!

At work (teachers qualification/retraining Institute) we have a
spare harddiskless PC with 1 MB 32pin simm.

And I want to use it as a terminal, not  thru  PLIP,  but  thru
serial connection of some sort  to  the  i386  box  (with,  you
guess, MiniLinux and spare serial port), which will connect  me
to a "superb" server: i486-DX66 with lots of memory and  power:
12 Mb.

I explained all this because its a typical case for lots of our
educational institutions:  we  have  ooutdated  hardware  which
could make good terminals for, say, email  access  or  database
access or whatever else, like text editing.

So, I think its one of the things SEUL  (*simple*  edu  use  of
Linux) is for: to give  people  simple  (cheap  and  efficient)
solutions on how to connect terminals for Linux (yes,  its  not
purely software issue, but still...)

I hope one day we will see SEUL/EDU as a place, where one can
find any info needed on:

- selected and annotated edu/school admin software pointers and/or copies
- hard/software solutions, typical for schools
- possible Linux configuration recommendations
  for different situations.
- pointers to methodological material (paper or online)
  on how to teach children on Linux applications
- a forum where teachers could exchange ideas about
  integrating Linux into teaching process


>It's not just an argument, it's reality.  Do more, with less :) Who do you
>know running an NT server can run a seperate terminal off of it (without
>expensive software) so multiple people can use one machine at the same
>time? And yet we're talking about doing it with completly antiquidated
>equiptment.
>
>I think that's the basic thing I'm getting at here. And I'm sure PCs are a
>little harder to come by in Russia than here in the US... :)  All the more
>reason to support this kind of stuff. Although we'll have to figure
>something out for that monitor radiation problem ;)

Well, but then it is easier to find people in Russia which know
how to make old electronics work for new schemes.

There are 2 problems I see (beside technical ones, which are
solvable by Internet data-mining):

1. Monitor radiation from old equipment is such that
   have no moral right to make terminals from
   what we have (some PDP-like chip based soviet
   two-processor (!) educational machines called UKNC)

   due to the fact they SUCKS like terminals!
   _Physically_ SUCKS!

   I don't wish my enemies to sit beside them for that reason.
   They were great machines at the end of 80s, but
   with so 'unstable' network and monitors...

2. Sometimes teachers think like this:
   "Lets talk the director into buying NEW computers,
    Pentiums, so we will be able to teach MS Office.
    If we make this crap (XT, i286, i386) work, the director will
    be less inclined to "probivat'" (ask from his superiors)
    new computers."


Sincerely yours,
Roman A. Suzi

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