Rick Engebretson <eng at pinenet.com> writes: > In the 70s, one powerful computer ran many dumb video/keyboard terminals. > In the 80s we adopted the one computer to one terminal model and maintain > it today. Today, with personal computers so powerful, is there a way to > again run several dumb terminals from one computer ?? > > This approach seem made for Linux. Not everybody cares to edit video or > play games on a P4 machine. Offices, schools, etc. save money, energy, > space, and noise. > > I am trying to re-invent the past. Any ideas ?? I ran my BBS on Linux for a while back in 95/96; worked fine. You connect each terminal (or modem) through a serial port. I had a 4-port card that required 4 low IRQs (it was an 8-bit ISA card), which was a bit hard to configure sometimes. You run a getty for each port you want to enable login on. I also own a 16-port serial card that was supported by Linux back then; it's also an ISA card, but 16-bit, and needs only one IRQ for all 16 ports. There's a special cable from the connector on the back of the card to a breakout box with 16 DB25 connectors. If you get serious about running multiple serial sessions on a box, I'm not using this card for anything and would sell it for, well, whatever the market value seems to be (I haven't done any research, I'm not actively working on selling it; but since you bring the topic I bought it for up...). -- David Dyer-Bennet / Welcome to the future! / dd-b at dd-b.net SF: http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/ Minicon: http://www.mnstf.org/minicon/ Photos: http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/