> > One note -- he mentioned that he wanted W95 capable machines,
> > which implies a minimum of a 486/50, and preferably a machine
> > that's a lot faster.
>
> Most everyone here, knows what we WANT, and it isn't always what we
> can
> AFFORD, darnit! It's always either, Our Money budget won't buy us a
True. Life is a series of compromises. But, "with a little help from
our
friends" it's amazing what people can do. OK, so I'm a Beatle's fan.
> MicroOptical pair of glasses, or, our Battery budget won't last long
> enough, or or or... <G>
I'll say...I would LOVE a transparent full color display using a side lit
holographic system. But, I don't have $50,000 to develop it, and noone
seems to offer anything like it at a realistic price.
> Win95 will definitely run on a 486DX33 with 8Mb RAM; it's quite slow
I don't know that I would use the word run. Execute, maybe... :-) I've
used it on a 486/50, and it was tolerable.
> a 386, BUT, remember - a 386 with 8Mb in the hand beats no machine
Again, I wholeheartedly agree. But, if some of us have some old
486's lying around, collecting dust, there's no reason to think that he
couldn't put them to better use elsewhere. It's entirely plausible that
some of us have unused Pentiums lying around too.
> all; Linux is a quite good OS; part of my thought was that there
> are
> Linux shells that look/act a lot like Win95, something to consider.
And, with so many free apps for Linux, it might be a better choice
overall. I was just looking at what he originally requested, which was
W95 machines.
> Know where Ghana is, don't want to think you're patronizing me here;
Nah...I didn't say that to patronize you. My knowledge of geography is
pathetic, so I assume that not *everyone* knows, offhand, where it
is.
> > We could certainly just fill up a shipping container and ship a
> few dozen
> > complete machines to him, with relative ease -- cost is the major
> factor.
My thought was that our "castoffs" are probably more than adequate,
and if he could pick up shipping, it could work for everyone.
> for the hardware he wanted, I could have mis-understood... My
> impression, too, is that shipping isn't THAT expensive (I'd bet I
> can
> reasonably quickly ship a monitor & machine to Ghana from here for
> about
> $200 max; Find me a usable wearable display at that price,
> *PLEASE*!
He also said that shipping is only part of the expense of getting stuff
into the country. Something about the officials at the port adding an
additional "surcharge." ;-)
> > Why am I picturing something akin to a NeXT cube, as a final
> > product?
>
> Haven't looked inside one, this would've been larger though. I
The NeXT was a single processor machine -- stacking motherboards
would produce an approximate "cube" though, and perhaps a case
design similar to the NeXT would be workable.
> > Of course, a passive backplane with multiple CPU cards (shades
> > of S-100) might make a good arrangement.
>
> For Beowulfing, if you wanted to make custom stuff, etc. One
I don't know much about a Beowulf cluster. Are they linked through
the bus, or through NICs? If through the bus, it should be possible
to come up with a backplane, and a right angle connector that would
link the PC bus slots to the backplane would be easy to cobble
together.
> I've bene offered a couple printers for good causes, may get one to
> the
> neighbor, but shipping those to the East Coast is pricey!
Exactly. Actually, where is everyone located? I know a lot of members
are probably in the area of MIT -- I'm in Dallas, Texas.
> It's really nice if all machines are of "identical" components, I've
> learned from managing 20 machines here, too. It makes debugging and
> finding drivers a lot easier, frankly. It's a nightmare to have 20
> machines with 20 different hardware configurations, it's at least
> nice
> to have machines put together in a few groups of identical machines.
Yep. And, if it was available, a custom burned CDROM backup disk
could be used to "restore" the hard drives to identical condition.
That's
assuming identical machines, though.
> I can find NICs for $1 sometimes, I've been only getting SMC cards,
> I
> can find a few good identical NICs here probably, if that'll help.
> I'd
> suggest we coordinate so he doesn't end up with a ragtag fleet of
> patchwork machines, if possible.
We're on a listserv -- that's a good starting point.
-- Chuck Knight
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