System without a hard drive?

S

soulliea

Weaksauce
Joined
Dec 10, 2007
Messages
100
is it possible?
i would assume u would need to be running it in a network...
but im talking if i wanted to run a few terminals networked, is there a way to do it so that not all the computers need a hard drive?
 
leading edge
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system d2f (sl #............)
key bd dka (sl #..........)
option bd.
manuals
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8088 or 8086, I forget, but most systems came with one floppy. this
had 2 !!
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I've got two machines that are completely diskless running in my bedroom 24/7. They don't even have keyboards, monitors or mice either. I'm about to add a third one to the set in a week or two..
 
ok so ive read the wikipedia stuff... someone lay down exactly what needs to be done... if i were gonna do this... what would i need for hardware and software to get it running?
 
ok so say i want to use mainstream hardware made in the last year or so... and it has to be pc...
 
soulliea said:
ok so say i want to use mainstream hardware made in the last year or so... and it has to be pc...
Click to expand...

What exactly are you wanting to do? Are you wanting to use them as dumb terminals where everything is actually run a server and displayed on the terminal? Or do you just want to boot from the netwrok and have the diskless machines do their own work once booted?
 
what i would like would be for the terminals to be running everything off the server(ie any applications would be loaded from the server, OS would boot off the server, etc.) but the terminals would do their own processing and not just display whats on the server...
 
What OS do you plan to run on the server? The recommended Linux solution to that would be Linux Terminal Server Project. Other posters will be better help in recommending solutions for Windows and other OSs. But for Linux, LTSP is highly popular and works just fine.
 
i think they would need to be running windows xp... or even vista if thats possible... i think xp would be preferable but a vista upgrade would need to be an option...
 
soulliea said:
i think they would need to be running windows xp... or even vista if thats possible... i think xp would be preferable but a vista upgrade would need to be an option...
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If you're wanting to run XP or Vista and still utilize the power of the system, then your best best is to just install it on a drive in the system. Booting XP from a network is a pain to set up, requires a lot of memory in the diskless system for a RAMdrive as well as actual space to run programs, and takes forever to boot unless you have a dedicated gigabit link to each box. Even then you still have to wait until entire drive image is transferred to the RAMdrive and then it has to boot it. Vista you might as well forget about.
 
I've used these http://www.mecholdings.com.my/_products/mterminal/mt9000/index.html and they respond (aside for 3D and video) just like a normal PC. all you need is keyboard, mouse and monitor.. you can run like 8 on a Athlon 3000+ 2GB ram server with no lag at all..

i dunno there are probably better brands than this.. but i've used these personally and they work great. oh they support speakers/mic too
 
excuse me for being a newb, but what would you want a diskless system for and what would you do with it? Say I had a home fileserver with all my multimedia, would I want to make my HTPC diskless (less noise)?
 
im more thinking for web surfing and stuff like that... nothing major, but it seems like a waste to have to spend money on things that a system would never need...
 
ok if it were for me that wouldnt be a problem... but it needs to be windows(at least xp)
 
black_b[ ]x;1032343417 said:
was just about to post that, seems pretty slick to me. I've used it for copying disk partitions using the drive XML plug-in.
Click to expand...

for the limited use I have used it for, it beat Winternals ERD commander.
very good stuff.
 
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