[SGVLUG] SCALE5x Booth - Volunteers and Ideas: LinuxDoc and Dumb Terminals

[Dustin Laurence]

On Mon, Dec 25, 2006 at 11:32:01PM -0800, David Lawyer wrote:
> really believe it.  Then I searched the Internet and found that my
> doubts were partly correct.  The problem is that by design, the USB and
> monitor cables are for short distances only, like a few feet.  So that
> rules out connecting a lot of monitors and keyboards to one PC.

I think it's three or five meters, but can be longer with a hub or
repeater.  The limitation is principally for any one length of dumb
cable.

That said, I tried a repeater cable with a printer and had no luck, so
it may be that such things don't work so well.  I only tried the once so
I don't know.  I'd think a real hub would make the extension successful
and my problem was I tried a cheap & dirty substitute.

> It's claimed that one can connect 9 additional monitors and keyboards
> to one PC.  I guess it might look like a table with the the computer
> in the center.  The commercial name is "userful" and it costs about
> $100/seat (retail).  So it's not free but they let you try out a
> 2-user system free.  Is there any free alternative?

I think so, but I don't have a reference.  I'm pretty sure though as I
believe there was a project aimed at getting the most bang for the buck
from school computers in third-world countries where price was at an
absolute premium.  I think even thin clients were deemed too costly if
it were possible to get by with just additional displays and input
devices.

> Since both schemes use Xwindow, you likely will not be able to get a
> text-console screen (virtual terminal) although there's always xterm.

That is no limitation, as xterm and it's cousins are better than the
original (because you can have many of them, resize them as you need,
and many other things.  Besides, if it didn't work with X-windows
frankly no one would care.

But if you do want multiple truly dumb terminals, then I think it's even
easier.  Unix has *always* done this, so I doubt you have to do more
than look up what was standard procedure back in the stone age. :-)

Dustin

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://www.sgvlug.net/pipermail/sgvlug/attachments/20061226/863ec995/attachment.bin