Re: New Member VERY hot on 8086's

["jerryc@innerpeace.org" <jerryc@innerpeace.org>]

Jerry:
>>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.

Dan:
> That sounds like an interesting project.

Jerry:
Thanks. They're already on the Internet in JavaScript and run on most 
post 1994 gui browsers. We've gotten some good reviews and lots of 
software and self-help sites link to us. If you do a Google search on 
"self-help software" or "free self-help", Inner Peace comes up
first. We'd love any help we can get making this works for 8086's.



J:
>>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.

D:
> 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).

J:
All on the local computer, and nothing else on it. Looks like it'll be 
C, maybe with ncurses, that we'll write in, unless something else is 
more compelling.




>>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.

That's one of the reasons we're looking at ELKS. Under DOS, every user 
has root access. The way we plan this to work, the computer will boot to 
a menu of Inner Peace programs, and that's all the user will ever have 
access to.




>>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?

I don't know where they come from, but the recyclers we've talked to 
have plenty of uses and call for the 386's and 486's. Even the 286's are 
used for some word processing and science applications. The 8086's are 
also used for some science apps, but they get more of them than they 
have call for. Word is from several different sources of them in 
different parts of the world that they'd love to have a good use for 
them, and that we could have all we could place for what we're planning. 
  Some placements, like some of the big homeless missions, could easily 
be a dozen or more computers, so this could add up.