Subject: Re: Vast piles of Workstations
To: None <port-sun3@NetBSD.ORG>
From: Ty Sarna <tsarna@endicor.com>
List: port-sun3
Date: 02/16/1996 20:27:13
In article <17101.199602160606@topcat.aisb.ed.ac.uk>,
Neal Harvey <nealh@aisb.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
> Thinking about this whole more-workstations-than-is-remotely-sensible
> thing, a couple of points occured to me. Firstly, with it getting to the
> point where whole installations of Sun3 gear are being junked it has
> become feasible for an individual to amass large numbers of the things.
> Secondly, with the reusability of storage media and the networked design
> of the range, odds are that these will be mostly diskless. Thirdly,
> given that monitors tend to die a lot quicker and are, on the whole,
> more expensive to replace, then it's also likely that many of these
> easily-acquired systems will be in the form of lone CPUs. So, what can
> we do with these?
Well, a couple ideas:
2 (4*) port terminal server with SLIP/PPP capability
2 (4*) port serial printer server
* When Adam Glass was portmaster he talked about the possibility of
rewriting the zs driver to be a bus, so that the tty subdriver could be
attached to all four ports (and it sounds like Gordon just did this) and
then with hacked cabling use the kbd/mouse ports as serial ports too.
It's too bad the tings are hard/expensive to expand, or they'd make good
parallel printer servers or interface devices (network monitor your
alarm system or coke machine, or whatever).
> Then I thought, what are the things we like about our Sun3s and what are
> the things we *don't* like, and the answer seemed obvious.
#define VOICE CROW_T_ROBOT
> We like their big monitors
Yes
> we like X
mm-hmm
> we like BSD
of course
> we like the way they love to network
yeah
> and we like the way they smell.
and sure, I can certainly see where... <pause> uh... *HUH*??
#undef VOICE