Re: New Member VERY hot on 8086's

[Dan Olson <dano@agora.rdrop.com>]

> We have over 100 free self-help programs and want to make them available
> for old 8086's for jails, halfway houses, shelters, rehab centers, and
> many other places where you wouldn't want to put more expensive computers.

That sounds like an interesting project.

> We probably only need a subset of ELKS (or Minix, or FreeDOS, or
> whatever we end up using). We mostly want to echo text to an 80 x 25
> text screen.

I assume everything is local to that computer then?  No serial terminals
off of a main computer or anything like that.  If that's the case, then I
guess you'd just need to make sure that whatever interface you choose is
supported (script, C, PERL, etc).

 We don't need to print or access any ports. We don't need
> mouse support (mice would probably disappear in these placements,
> anyway, and they're just something else to break). We looked at the
> Minix utilities and libraries, and they do much more than we need.

When you mentioned being concerned with hardware damage, is that true of
software too?  I mean, do you need a sort-of "security", not to totally
lock people out of places they shouldn't be, but to at least make it such
that someone with a little computer skill can't trash the system.  I
remember in school floppys were ofter stolen, and in DOS it's easy to type
"format c:".  I *think* ELKS would at least make it a little tougher to
destroy data on a fixed drive.

> These machines will be set up as dedicated Inner Peace machines, so
> other functions will not be needed. As you know, there are literally
> warehouses full of 8086's all over the world. Many of them end up in
> landfills because people do not know what to do with them. We have a
> good use for them if we can get it working.

I almost hate to ask this, but aren't 386s adn 486s just as easly found
for free?  I don't know, I just can't see someone keeping 8086s in
spendy warehouse space for this length of time.  Or do they come from
schools or places that are upgrading to those free 486s?

> We did plan to do this project with FreeDOS, but feel that using ELKS or
> Minix would help in the promotion of linux, and would rather go that route.

I can't fault you there :)

> P.S. Here's the link for the original project. We'll be converting it to
> innerpeace4elks soon, if that's how we end up going.

Let us know what you end up doing.

	Dan