Dumb terminals

Karla

Was wondering if it would be possible to connect basically a monitor and a keyboard up to another computer and use it as a kind of terminal. I guess some sort of box would have to be connected somewhere along the line, but it wouldn't have to be a full computer, would it?

Just something I was wondering that's all.

Hobbes

Explain in more detail. For all I know you just moved your monitor and keyboard to another PC box.

Karla

OK, sorry I'm not too great at explaining my self really am I?

Say you have a computer downstairs, a full blown computer. And you figure it would be nice to have a terminal upstairs (yeah I'm THAT lazy! ) to check mail or whatever.

What I want to know is, do you have to have two computers to do this? I was thinking the terminal upstairs could just be a monitor and a keyboard with some kind of hub with maybe a few megs of memory as a box. Or even no box at all. And it uses the downstairs computers resources to run i.e. memory, HD, graphics, everything really.

Is it possible?

quozl

Sorta, you could get a ****ty pc say a pc90 for nothing and run the other machine as an nt server or linux (prob can even do it wi win 9 . Then log on from the upstairs pc over network and use other pcs resources.
I can do it under linux but sure you could do it under nt if you fiddle about, thats kinda the point of nt. As for useing graphics card that womnt work, as you'd need a dirty big wire from graphics card downstairs to your upstairs monitor not gonna send that over lan connect.
but its do-able but surely more effort than walking downstairs to check mail
Quozl

shank

There is definitely summit that will let you do this, I can't remember where I saw it, probaly pcplus. It's a small box which lets u run 2 monitors and 2 k/boards off the one machine, think it was pricey though. Lets face it for the price of a monitor + box thing + k/b you could get a low spec machine. I'll have a rumage about and see can I find the article.

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shank@quake.ie
news.quake.ie

Helv

I dont think it is possible to run a terminal off a PC. Get yourself a Sun System (yuck) and you can run a couple of terminals off it. But as far as I know the only other way would be as quozl said, and set up a server type situation.

Hobbes

I know what Shank is talking about and I can get you full details on Tuesday thou That would be exactly what Karla described.

It is possible to run a terminal over the network, but more to the point.. why would you? You could get a low spec machine, network it and run wingate on the server so the person running the terminal can access the net.

Or just move the machine upstairs you lazy so and so.

Gyck

I can't say I have any experiance with it, but check out Citrix MetaFrame. It seems (from what I read about it) to be an NT server app that allows various architectures to run as clients in a dumb terminal kind of role...

...I'm sure that someone out there knows $hit loads more about this than I do...

I suppose at the most basic you could get any machine to telnet into any other, and so act as a kind of 'dumb terminal'...

actual dumb terminals must be quite expensive nowadays, since most computers come with a cpu (and a dedicated OS of some sort)...

???

Karla

Cheers folks!
It's not actually something I'm planning to do in the near future or anything, just something I was wondering, that's all.
Luckily with the Y2K coming up loads of offices will be getting rid of old computers so there should be plenty of old parts to play with.
I've already got dibs on a few boxes, so for the next few months my job is to convince office folk that their monitors and keyboards aren't Y2K compliant either!

Thanks anyways

quozl

Just tell them that the extra cpu cycles involved in erroneous date calculations will result in increased power usage (makeing them finacially unviable) and also thereby inceasing the radiation output from the monitors.
This could lead to radiation poisoning, hair loss, death, and multiple legal proceedings.
Oh and if they belive that? get me a nice big hard disk, tell them theres a danger of it exploding and embedding hard disks in the walls <lol>
ta
Quozl