Thin Client X-terminal help

[space_monkey]

I've got five NCD19r X-Terminals

For those too lazy to google, they're 19" colour monitors that have a 10baseT, mouse and keyboard jack,
and boot over the network from any unix machine running some kind of Thin Client application.
No CPU, HDD, RAM or anything, just the monitor and a thin base that allows you to connect a network cable and a keyboard and mouse.

I think it would be really cool to have a couple of totally silent workstations running off of a server that can be as noisy as it wants in the toolshed in the backyard!

Has anybody played with Thin Client X-terminals before?
There's a HOWTO at http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/other-formats/pdf/NCD-X-Terminal.pdf

From my reading at http://slpv2.org/~dwmccorm/works/ncd-xterm/
http://www.fnal.gov/cd/xterm/NCDBasic.html
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/NCD-X-Terminal-5.html

it seems everybody points to www.ncd.com but I can't figure out where I can get the software I need to run on a Linux box that will act as the server.... can anyone help?

TIA

 

[KaosDG]

holy crap.
Last time I used those was in college.

I'm pretty sure they get their OS load from BOOTP. (at least that's how we configured them for SunOS)



Also once they are "up and running" you can have them connect via network to any running X session (using xdmcp)

 

[space_monkey]

Solution found: http://www.vilkoff.com/docs/ncd-x-terminal-howidoit/

 

[taqueso]

Please keep us updated. I want to know how well those NCD terminals work.

 

[space_monkey]

I was thinking I could put an X-terminal in almost every room... kitchen counter, next to the toilet, laundry room...
then you could check email, surf the web, write a killer PHP code snippet, etc. whenever / wherever you feel like it.
The screens could be stealth mounted in cabinets or even mounted in the wall, and they wouldn't make any noise at all.

If I stacked all the screens in one location Matrix / Nebuchadnezzar - style it would probably be convenient to build a switch so I could connect just one keyboard and mouse to control all the X-terminals, rather than have five keyboards and mice cluttering up a workspace. Is this a good idea (or even feasible)?

I'm also balancing these benefits from the enjoyment I'd get from throwing a couple of them off the top of the tallest building I can find.

Anyone have other ideas what I could use them for?

 

[Spearboy]

god i hated the thin clients at my school when we had to install them. so unreliable...then that was probably our overly funded highly unorganized and unintelligent tech department that caused them to be. god schools can be the biggest waste of our money. our school just rebuilt the campus before i left a year and a half ago. wasted 4 million on a tech building the had poor wiring, not enough ethernet jacks or power jacks, and just plain overall was designed very poorly. aparently they seemed to think they know more about how to design a tech building than us. too bad they had to call us when their button on their "hard drive" was stuck. morons...every last one of them

 

[space_monkey]

haha the gf is not impressed with the space they are taking up;
looks like I'm going to have to make a pretty nice presentation about how useful these can really be.

Her: "How much did you pay for them???"
Me: <big grin>
Her: "How much?"
Me: "Wanna go dumpster diving with me tonight?"

 

[space_monkey]

Update:
"No."

 

[foreignkid]

rotflol....

Some people wish they had g/fs that would go dumpster diving with them .... here we wish we had dumpsters to go diving in! Consider yourself lucky.