On Tue, Mar 14, 2000 at 09:18:44PM -0600, rich wrote: > total network newbie here, > > I recently acquired a 486dx-33 with 1.4gb hard drive that i want to use > as an x-terminal to connect to my pentium-200 (which runs potato). Is > potato appropriate for a 486? I have an old cd of bo that I thought > would work on the 486, but would I be able to connect to the potato > pentium? > > BTW, is it really even feasible to use a 486 to run X programs like > wordperfect and Netscape off of my pentium?
Should work fine. I believe this is roughly the configuration of a few commercial NC/X-Terminal systems. I was running X servers on low-grade Pentium boxen in a Unix environment ~1995 with no problems. The factors most likely to affect performance are your system and video memory, and your video card specifically. Not that I could give you specs on what to choose, but if preformance was lagging, I'd look there. A fast network card would also probably be a plus <g>, though even a 10 MB/s card should handle X events on an uncontested network. Gaming might lag though. This is actually a really great way to split load between an application server an the desktop. Driving an X server is a fairly significant task, likewise, some applications suck cycles. If you can split the load, a slighlty beefed server can dish out apps to a number of lightweight terminal systems. By "slightly beefed" -- a contemporary x86 system with a large memory configuration and SCSI disk subsystem should be sufficient to handle, say, household activities for 2-6 users without notable lag. -- Karsten M. Self (kmself@ix.netcom.com) What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? Scope out Scoop: http://scoop.kuro5hin.org/ Nothin' rusty about Kuro5hin: http://www.kuro5hin.org/