At 09:59 PM 2/9/99 +0000, Geoff Blake wrote:
>On Tue, 9 Feb 1999, Mark Phillips wrote:
>> I have come by an NCD HMXpro X terminal. I have established that it is
>> fully functional but that it is lacking the server side software.
>
>Pardon me, but isn't the X-terminal the server and will it not work with
>*any* X-client running on your Linux boxes. Of course, the X-term. may
>need loaded software, but my experience is that all X-terms, such as Tek.
>etc. run from (E)PROM based firmware.
This is all hazy since it's been several years since I dealt with
these beasties, but I seem to remember it being something like this:
The X server software for an NCD X terminal generally resides on a
bootp host machine on the network. When the X terminal boots, it
requests its configuration file, which has a name that matches the
hexadecimal hardware address of the terminal's ethernet interface,
from the bootp server configured in the X terminal's firmware. This
file specifies various configuration details for the X terminal along
with the name and location of the X server software. The terminal
loads the server, configures it, and then runs. The terminal might
load the software using tftp, now that I think about it, but you get
the general idea.
This scheme allows the software for the various X terminals on a
heterogenous network to be maintained at a single location. If you
have 2000 X terminals, you don't have 2000 sets of (E)PROMs to
change or reprogram. It also allows you to customize each X terminal
to its environment simply by editing a text file and rebooting the
terminal; not all computers in a large enterprise are necessarily
going to be running the same version of X.
...b. ky3z
