From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Dan Olson Subject: Re: New Member VERY hot on 8086's Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2003 11:43:39 -0800 (PST) Sender: linux-8086-owner@vger.kernel.org Message-ID: <20030113113444.A48585-100000@agora.rdrop.com> References: <3E21D8FC.1050305@innerpeace.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Return-path: In-Reply-To: <3E21D8FC.1050305@innerpeace.org> List-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: "jerryc@innerpeace.org" Cc: linux-8086@vger.kernel.org > 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