Re: [9fans] An old laptop

[Digby Tarvin <digbyt@acm.org>]

Hi,

> > The obvious question is - could it be gainfully employed as a Plan9
> > terminal server?
> >
> Well, it seems u are interested in graphics. However, you could always boot
> Plan9 over an ether connection via a boot disk and use another machine's
> file server capability. Also, utilize a CPU server for ur work. This would
> eradicate the confining hard disk space u have as well as the lacking CPU
> power. The only compromise, really, is the necessity of running without
> a windowing environment. Though, with ed and the usual plan9 command line
> functionality I don't really see the overall disadvantage. I, personally,
> will take another box however I can get it :)

Yes, that is what I had in mind.

> > The challenge I see is that the only ethernet connectivity it has is
> > a Xircom PE3 (parallel port adapter). The alternative is to use a
> > parallel or serial based network connection (PLIP/SLIP etc).
> >
> > Anyone tried a setup like this? Is the memory sufficient? I seem to recall
> > that small memory was a problem during the install process at one time.
> >
> With a boot disk u don't need to install it, just boot it via the floppy. Your
> only issue would be hacking up a boot disk that uses Xircom parallel networking.
> I know lanl has a Xircom PCMCIA driver, but, I do not know how much
> functionality Xircom has layered from the actual device interface. Maybe
> coding up a parallel driver wouldn't be too hard?
>
> I hope you give it a try ;) Would be nice to see it work

I would quite like to have a go at a driver, but the stumbling block
was that Xircom were never willing to release programming information
for the PE3.

There was a BSD/OS (commercial BSD)  driver, which is how I have been
able to use Unix on it, but BSDI had to agree not to release the source
in order to obtain the information from Xircom. So I guess unless
someone interested in Plan9 has worked for a company with access to this
information and written a driver, or someone has managed to reverse
engineer a driver, it is not going to be easy.

I wonder if anyone has gotten a Linux driver to work - if so I might
be able to glean the programming details from that...

Thanks for your comments.

Regards,
DigbyT
--
Digby R. S. Tarvin                                              digbyt@acm.org
http://www.cthulhu.dircon.co.uk