Making RDP kiosk/clients?

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Anyone have any experience in making any of these? I don't need any internet on these units, just something simple to boot up and connect to our server, with nothing extra needing to be installed on the server end.

I am looking for something simple that does not require a lot of dinking around with linux. I don't have any linux background.

Any help would be great.
 
How about a thinclient? WYSE makes alot of them, so does other companies.
 
Cost is an issue otherwise we would just buy new pc's or thin clients.
 
I'm not sure if I understand what you are looking for. Do you have hardware already that you want to use for this, or are you looking for suggestions on what hardware to use?

If you have hardware to use - you could try to PXE boot to something like dosrdp
 
Neoware units or Compaq T20 units would do what you want.

I have a few setup around the house to connect to XP Pro thats actually a VMWare machine (1 is at the bar downstairs and 1 is in the garage)
 
teststrips said:
I'm not sure if I understand what you are looking for. Do you have hardware already that you want to use for this, or are you looking for suggestions on what hardware to use?

If you have hardware to use - you could try to PXE boot to something like dosrdp
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We have the hardware already, The network cards for a lot of these machines are integrated.

Any info on the dosrdp?




dbwillis said:
Neoware units or Compaq T20 units would do what you want.

I have a few setup around the house to connect to XP Pro thats actually a VMWare machine (1 is at the bar downstairs and 1 is in the garage)
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Trying to do this with minimal cost.
 
RDP = Remote Desktop?

What do you want the kiosks to be able to do?

Usually free does = Dinking around
 
DosRDP was a remote desktop client that ran in DOS. It looks as though the main website terminalsoft.net is now a adware piece of garbage. I was able to download the software from one of the mirrors listed at http://wareseeker.com/Network-Internet/dosrdp-2.0.zip/370009

Its a trial though - you may have trouble registering it but its worth a shot.

Do the machines that you intend to use for this purpose have a legal OS already (such as 95-98-ME-NT-2000-XP)? If so, you'd probably be able to lock them down that they can only use the RDP client.
 
"Trying to do this with minimal cost" you can find the thin clients for ~$20, just point them to the machine you want to RDP to
 
teststrips said:
DosRDP was a remote desktop client that ran in DOS. It looks as though the main website terminalsoft.net is now a adware piece of garbage. I was able to download the software from one of the mirrors listed at http://wareseeker.com/Network-Internet/dosrdp-2.0.zip/370009

Its a trial though - you may have trouble registering it but its worth a shot.

Do the machines that you intend to use for this purpose have a legal OS already (such as 95-98-ME-NT-2000-XP)? If so, you'd probably be able to lock them down that they can only use the RDP client.
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2 of the machines have a windows 98 coa, one has a winME coa, and the other an XP home COA.

dbwillis said:
"Trying to do this with minimal cost" you can find the thin clients for ~$20, just point them to the machine you want to RDP to
Click to expand...

Find me 20$ thin clients.


We just need them to go directly to the RDP log in screen, possibly even pass the credentials and auto log-in.
 
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sc0tty8 said:
Price can't be beat, I emailed the boss, I come to find out today that the ram I wanted to use for these systems at work is shot, and this is the easy way out. I might snag one of these for myself at home. Looks like nothing will need to be installed server side,m and we have a handfull of clients already.
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I was going to recomend checking ebay for some thinclients as well. Anyway if you end up going the desktop route their are a few small linux distros that are designed pretty much to do nothing but connect to remote sessions. I would try a few.

Personaly though I would try to get some dirt cheap thinkclients and just buy a few extra. They are cheap enough that you can just replace them if they fail.
 
Wow, I might try one of those Maxspeed ones for $20, anyone have any experience with them? Looks like an older model, but would be fun to play with.
 
Grentz said:
Wow, I might try one of those Maxspeed ones for $20, anyone have any experience with them? Looks like an older model, but would be fun to play with.
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Yea they are. If you really want one thats good to play with you can get the neoware ones running xpe for less then 100 bucks if you look around. One of my clients had a shit load of them(that they paid full price for new). Most were via 800 mhz ones although the later ones were 1ghz. They took normal pc133(the 1 ghz may have taken ddr) and had your standard ports on the back. Thing was just a striaght pc running xp embeded off a solid state drive(like 128 megs). You could throw in a notebook hard drive and run whatever you wanted off them though. Know a few people that got them, threw in a second nic via the pci slot in them and made them routers.

The xpe ones generaly are a little more powerful from my experience. You also have some running linux that do the same thing. Mind you hp and others should have something simular although I know more about the neowares personaly. I would think the hp ones running xpe would be about the same.
 
I am going to snag one of those thin clients for my own use to play with. I am going to go talk to the one boss tomorrow and then talk to the boss that calls the shots lol. I am going to see if we can get 5 of these, we need at least 2, but, we have NOTHING backup at work. NO extra monitors, I just ordered 6 keyboard/mouse combo's, 3 are used lol.

The units we have now, are HP units, mix of unix/linux and windows ce. I like the unix ones, they boot right to a log in screen, we are trying to eliminate workers surfing the internet, we had people working OT and just surfing the internet at their machines....
 
swatbat said:
Yea they are. If you really want one thats good to play with you can get the neoware ones running xpe for less then 100 bucks if you look around. One of my clients had a shit load of them(that they paid full price for new). Most were via 800 mhz ones although the later ones were 1ghz. They took normal pc133(the 1 ghz may have taken ddr) and had your standard ports on the back. Thing was just a striaght pc running xp embeded off a solid state drive(like 128 megs). You could throw in a notebook hard drive and run whatever you wanted off them though. Know a few people that got them, threw in a second nic via the pci slot in them and made them routers.

The xpe ones generaly are a little more powerful from my experience. You also have some running linux that do the same thing. Mind you hp and others should have something simular although I know more about the neowares personaly. I would think the hp ones running xpe would be about the same.
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The XPE units are on the bay for about 100$ a piece at the low end.

I am going to snag one of these just to play with. http://cgi.ebay.com/MaxSpeed-Maxter...oryZ1486QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
 
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sc0tty8 said:
I am going to snag one of those thin clients for my own use to play with. I am going to go talk to the one boss tomorrow and then talk to the boss that calls the shots lol. I am going to see if we can get 5 of these, we need at least 2, but, we have NOTHING backup at work. NO extra monitors, I just ordered 6 keyboard/mouse combo's, 3 are used lol.

The units we have now, are HP units, mix of unix/linux and windows ce. I like the unix ones, they boot right to a log in screen, we are trying to eliminate workers surfing the internet, we had people working OT and just surfing the internet at their machines....
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Yea I've seen that before. We ended up just killing their internet access and only alowing them to hit like 2 sites that were work related.

sc0tty8 said:
The XPE units are on the bay for about 100$ a piece at the low end.

I am going to snag one of these just to play with. http://cgi.ebay.com/MaxSpeed-Maxter...oryZ1486QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
Click to expand...

The xpe ones go up and down in price. Last time I got some was for a small project one of my friends and I were working on(we had them streaming music through his house and one at the bar for looking up drinks) I found them for like 50 to 60 bucks a shot. Still a lot more then your ce ones you are looking at which are a great price.
 
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swatbat said:
Yea I've seen that before. We ended up just killing their internet access and only alowing them to hit like 2 sites that were work related.



The xpe ones go up and down in price. Last time I got some was for a small project one of my friends and I were working on(we had them streaming music through his house and one at the bar for looking up drinks) I found them for like 50 to 60 bucks a shot. Still a lot more then your ce ones you are looking at which are a great price.
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Those ce ones are going to be exactly what we want. I was looking at enabling multiple RDP sessions for XP pro, it looks like with some hacking into the regestry and such, you can allow concurrent sessions, which is going to be good for me, I don't want to have to buy or play with a server OS at home.

Now, I need to find a handful of 15" lcd's for the clients:) Any of those on ebay for 20$ shipped?
 
sc0tty8 said:
Those ce ones are going to be exactly what we want. I was looking at enabling multiple RDP sessions for XP pro, it looks like with some hacking into the regestry and such, you can allow concurrent sessions, which is going to be good for me, I don't want to have to buy or play with a server OS at home.

Now, I need to find a handful of 15" lcd's for the clients:) Any of those on ebay for 20$ shipped?
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Yea you just have to modify the registry and replace the termsrv.dll file with an different version that allows it. Want to say you can get 3 users without it messing up. Some companies also have programs to do this that allow more but they are expensive. Have the dll around here somewhere from when I played around with that once before.

If you are looking at playing with it for a little while you could always download a 180 day trial of server 03 and load the trial of terminal server or just use the 2 admin connections it allows by default.
 
I am going to try the dll file and see what it gets me tonight.

We have 6 thin clients on the way. Damn, easier then I thought.
 
Did you get CE ones or XPE ones?

The XPE ones look cool, but are a lot more expensive for a home project for me :p
 
Got CE for work, will prob get a CE for myself, the XPE are too much IMO just to dick around with.
 
sc0tty8 said:
Got CE for work, will prob get a CE for myself, the XPE are too much IMO just to dick around with.
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Thats how I feel, does not seem like they do THAT much more anyhow besides possibly being a bit faster and able to support higher resolutions for the monitor.

You picking up the $10 ones on ebay? I think I might grab 2 and try to make one into a smoothwall box and one into a digital picture frame client, I dunno yet though, might play with 2X as well.
 
Well I just grabbed 2 of those $10 ones from ebay, cant wait to try them out and play around with them!
 
Well, they are pretty decent so far. Anyone figure out how to access the bios on them? (Maxterm 5140)

It boots CE off of a CF card, but I would love to get into the bios.
 
I saw nothing to get into the bios. I'd like to set it up to just boot and post an RDP log in, or, auto-log in to the RDP.

I noticed you can delete the stuff off the desktop, restart, and it comes back. I'd like to have the unit so when you turn it on, it boots, and auto loads right to the rdp session or to the rdp prompt.

I spent some time on google and it looks as if I need to get some sort of a platform development kit for windows ce 3.0?

Any info on updating/upgrading the OS/settings on these? We also need to incorporate scanners with ours, ultimately, we need these to boot right to the rdp session, and on the rdp side, it loads up our work station driver and can run w/o a keyboard. Users just need to scan in and scan out of the jobs.
 
sc0tty8 said:
I saw nothing to get into the bios. I'd like to set it up to just boot and post an RDP log in, or, auto-log in to the RDP.

I noticed you can delete the stuff off the desktop, restart, and it comes back. I'd like to have the unit so when you turn it on, it boots, and auto loads right to the rdp session or to the rdp prompt.

I spent some time on google and it looks as if I need to get some sort of a platform development kit for windows ce 3.0?

Any info on updating/upgrading the OS/settings on these? We also need to incorporate scanners with ours, ultimately, we need these to boot right to the rdp session, and on the rdp side, it loads up our work station driver and can run w/o a keyboard. Users just need to scan in and scan out of the jobs.
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I would like to do the exact same thing (just boot to a RDP login) but have been having trouble figuring out how to exactly. I will make sure to post if I find anything and if you could be so kind to as well that would be awesome!

The removing of desktop icons is listed as a feature in the manual. The RDP client is pretty light though with no options which surprised me, dont know exactly what most people used these for without much configuration for RDP.

I did crack one of them open and found that the CE is loading from a 32mb CF card that is installed on the bottom of the external CF card slot reader. So potentially you could get something bootable and put it directly on a CF card and load it up.

Also, I tried replacing the stock 64mb of RAM with a standard stick of 128mb 100 CL2 and it worked great (sped things up a bit as well). Only issue is that a full height stick which is all I have will not clear the case when you try to slide the mobo back in.

I am amazed how well these things are built! Solid aluminum case that could take quite a beating.
 
Grentz said:
I would like to do the exact same thing (just boot to a RDP login) but have been having trouble figuring out how to exactly. I will make sure to post if I find anything and if you could be so kind to as well that would be awesome!

The removing of desktop icons is listed as a feature in the manual. The RDP client is pretty light though with no options which surprised me, dont know exactly what most people used these for without much configuration for RDP.

I did crack one of them open and found that the CE is loading from a 32mb CF card that is installed on the bottom of the external CF card slot reader. So potentially you could get something bootable and put it directly on a CF card and load it up.

Also, I tried replacing the stock 64mb of RAM with a standard stick of 128mb 100 CL2 and it worked great (sped things up a bit as well). Only issue is that a full height stick which is all I have will not clear the case when you try to slide the mobo back in.

I am amazed how well these things are built! Solid aluminum case that could take quite a beating.
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Do you have a link to your manual? I don't think we go one with ours....

I did crack open the case and I did see the sdram slot, didn't really look at the CF slot.

If I could get rid of the stuff in the start menu and desktop that was not needed, I can just put a sticker out there that says how to log into the server. However, building 2 network sucks balls, its 56k to do anything, and randomly drops connection. In building 1, its wicked fast, and fully switched(that was me)

We are going to go fully 10/100 networking with a 1000 back bone to feed 24 in building 1 and at least 10 in building 2 plus external users on the internet....
 
Grentz said:
The manual is pretty much just about CE, here it is though:
http://www.jglcomponents.com/download/maxspeed.pdf

Link is from the ebay auction.

I would love it if I could find a simple bootable RDP client I could just install on the CF card and boot to.
Click to expand...

I know the xpe neowares will allow this. At least the ones I've delt with will. They are just a via 800 mhz pc(newer ones are 1ghz or so). You will need an adapter to move it to cf but other then that it will work fine.
 
So whats the best avenue to go with turning these into a dedicated rdp client? I didn't see anything in the manual about deleting icons and keeping them gone.
 
sc0tty8 said:
So whats the best avenue to go with turning these into a dedicated rdp client? I didn't see anything in the manual about deleting icons and keeping them gone.
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I'm not sure with the ce units but with the xp ones you can log out and hold shit or hold shift when you go to log in and get a login prompt and log in as administrator. From there you can set it up and throw a rdp link into the startup. Can't speak for certain about the ce units. One of my friends use to work with a shit load of neoware ce units. I'll ask him tommorrow if I get a chance if he has any ideas(different brand but should be pretty much the same thing)
 
swatbat said:
I know the xpe neowares will allow this. At least the ones I've delt with will. They are just a via 800 mhz pc(newer ones are 1ghz or so). You will need an adapter to move it to cf but other then that it will work fine.
Click to expand...

Ya, they are already CF based so no extra adapter is needed (and you can just use a card reader on a PC to move stuff to them).

swatbat said:
I'm not sure with the ce units but with the xp ones you can log out and hold shit or hold shift when you go to log in and get a login prompt and log in as administrator. From there you can set it up and throw a rdp link into the startup. Can't speak for certain about the ce units. One of my friends use to work with a shit load of neoware ce units. I'll ask him tommorrow if I get a chance if he has any ideas(different brand but should be pretty much the same thing)
Click to expand...


There is no login on these units with CE, it just boots right to the desktop. Seems like XPe is quite a bit different.

If you could talk to your friend though that would be awesome! Much appreciated :cool:

Another thing that is puzzling is that using the RDP client on CE it seems to be using low bandwidth settings even when unchecked as the graphics and colors are turned way down and I cannot find any config for it.

I would love if I could just get a good RDP client on the thinclients to use like the client that you use on full desktops.
 
Grentz said:
I would love if I could just get a good RDP client on the thinclients to use like the client that you use on full desktops.
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The whole windows ce thing seems to be fairly primitive.
 
compslckr said:
I was looking into setting up one of those $10 units from ebay in my kitchen and I came across Thinstation. I was thinking maybe I could install it to a flash card and just pop it in.

Here is a link to the project page, it looks pretty promising.
http://thinstation.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/ThIndex
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I saw that as well and its in my favorites. I am gonna try loading it up this weekend and see what happens.

I will report back how it goes.
 
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