🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <01bca4ca$18e76c20$341f3bcb@nadan>, Nathan D wrote:
>My parents have been given and old Nimrod PC which they do not have a use
>for.  I believe it to be pre-286 (can't see an obvious CPU inside?) and
>currently has DOS 3.3, MS Word v1 and MS Works v1 running on it.  It has a
>32MB hard drive and 10-12"? Monochrome monitor.
>Is there any practical use for such a machine in a Linux environment?
>I an currently looking for a good 486 or similar to get some network
>experience with.

Well, you could do one of several things, once you have set Linux up on
your 486 (or whatever).

1) Find an old 8-bit network card and a network card for your Linux box
   hook the two machines together and run NCSA Telnet (or possibly minuet)
   on the Nimrod so you can use it as a terminal for the Linux box.
   (Including multiple sessions, etc)
2) Hook the two machines together via the serial ports and set up getty
   on the Linux box to accept a serial terminal. Run terminal software
   (does Works has such a beast ?) to run as a dumb terminal to the
   Linux box.
3) Hook the boxes together via the serial or parallel ports and run ppp/slip
   or plip (as appropriate),  then run dos software that does ppp/slip or
   plip (later versions of Minuet may do this), proceed as in 1). 
4) If the machine is in fact a 286 (and this is something I must try one day
   if I ever get my hands on the program) you could try obtaining a copy of
   the program/OS desqview/X and together with 1) or 3) run the machine as a
   (somewhat limited) X-Terminal (Oh, I just noticed 10-12" monochrome monitor
   so I guess this one is probably not the ticket).

Alternatively there is progress being made on porting a subset of the Linux
kernel to 8088, 8086 etc chips .. however, this is still very much in
development, and not as yet particularly useful.

Rohan Tronson
KiHi Internet Solutions
<rohan@kihi.com.au>