Old Computers : Together we are not dead

Small distros install and demonstration, old computers use with LTSP, etc. This workshop will be the occasion to open and understand computers a little better. SAPI will provide around 20 old computers for that exercise.

We'll split that workshop into 3 main areas:

• Franskenstein : hardware recombination, anatomy of a computer, take many to make one.

• SOS : Small Operating Systems : exploration and demonstration of the principal small-sized distributions, DSML, ..

• TWAND : Together We Are Not Dead : Linux Terminal Server Project, clusters, etc ..
  • Wall of Screens : we could use some old comuters as display for combinating images from VJ console, or multidisplay in a way or another. It will suck much more electricity than needed, but well, that can be fun. How to to it ? It can be fun to have ascii video on the framevuffer ?

Time schedule
This workshop will be open in permanence, maybe during nights even, as Nicod is the cave engineer and doesn't speak spanish, he may swap cycles.
24th: install of the LTSP network and different distros
25th - 28th : permanent open activity, maintenance of 10 computers for public use on LTSP server, and further experiments for benchmarking small distros and tuning LTSP.
29th : cleaning, writing how-to and collaborative debriefing.

Who works on it ?

• ~nicod : management of the experiment space, LTSP and cluster experiments
• ~r1 : network and system hacking
• ~djamel? : public assistance for terminal use, technical support
• ~di3 : system and configuration testing, and writing spanish how-to.
• ~iokese : networking support
• ~gaba : technical support, system configuration and testing... spanish-english translations if needed.

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SAPI will provide some old computers (to be confirmed). These are HP Vectra's 486/25-VL.
This are some of the machines that I told you about. Sandra is now asking if we can take them to the event.

• computers
• Keyboards
• Screens
• More equipment
• HDD and Floppies

~jose?

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I think that the only way for which they will be usefull will be as pure ltsp client (and even, they will be probably very slow, and with very limited graphics). But for this, we'll need at least one bigger computer dedicated to this. It will essentially need about 256MB minimum (512MB recommanded) of memory.
~nicod

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