Greetings all
I am interested in teaching myself about networking using the old-fashioned
hands on approach, and building a home network. I am wondering if I can use
this network to solve the constant problem of both my girlfriend and I
always wanting to use the one computer at the same time.
I own two older machines - a 486DX4 at 33MHz with 8meg RAM and an AMD-133
with 16meg Ram (one of those hot-rodded chips for 486 boards that claims
Pent-75 performance. I would like to connect one or both of these machines
to my current desktop (Celeron 333 with 64M).
I am curious to know whether in a network I can use one of the older
machines as a 'dumb terminal' or simply just running X. Using the dumb
terminal can I run applications on the server using the server's CPU and
RAM? As an example could I run CivCTP or Applix using the 486 machine, but
have the processing done by the Celeron?
I want to do this so that I can run programmes that require more CPU than
the older machines have got (at least in the case of the 486-33) and make
use of the old equipment.
The 486 has two hard drives - 40meg and 80 meg. IS that enough space to put
in a cut down Linux? Could I get away with just installing the very base
components plus X, with all other software on the server? I was going to
use RH5.2 or 6 because Mandrake is Pentium optimised. Which would be the
better of the two distros to use?
Just doing a little background work before I sit down and RTFM.
Aaron
