Old boxes.. WWW kiosk?

[PiqueABoo]

A primary school is upgrading a suite full of old boxes (550MHz, 64MB, CDs) and was wondering whether they might still be useful for something. Haven't looked inside or tried it, but I've been wondering whether:

a) It might be possible to move some RAM around to make some 128MB machines.

b) They would run something low maintenance e.g. a LiveCD (or HD installed) WWW kiosk.

Bad idea? If not, has anyone done this and what did you use?

[webman]

I recall reading a few good resources on the web for this using Linux. Search for Ubuntu Internet Kiosk, or KDE Kiosk on Google.

[Ric_]

@PiqueABoo: Thin client

Check out www.thinstation.org - you could also use thinstation to set them up as web kiosks (there is an option of using Firefox).

Planning to do the same with some old RM boxes. Going to turn them in espresso stations.

[PiqueABoo]

Glanced at so far:

KioskCD - easy to config (util writes config directly to ISO), but I
want to zap the Firefox links bar and haven't figured out
if you can. Had to tell it skip DNS test to work.

BoothBox - favourite UI (full screen Firefox) but it looks like I'll need
to fiddle quite a lot for UK keyboard etc.

ThinStation - used one of the online ISO build sites which is nice and
provides a Firefox Kiosk config. Having problems getting
decent screen size (testing under VMWare).

[Ric_]

I use a resolution of 1024x768 on my thinstation machines (15" displays - CRT and TFT) and it works well. You need more than 1MB on the video though - those nasty hobbits at Dell configure the onboard video on the GX280 to 1MB!

If you want to send me your config file I will try editing it.

[plexer]

These all look good. I've been thinking the same thing myself as we are probably moving to Phoenix E1 soon which is a web interface to the schools MIS so redundant hardware recycled into a portal pc in each classroom would be perfect for registration etc...

Ben

[PiqueABoo]

Been trying this.. & trying that ..& googling.. & trying something else ..& by and by..

If you want Boothbox (boothbox.sourceforge.net) to definitely, definitely have a UK keyboard then one way to do that in your remastering enviroment is to go modify where the language vars are set in:

/etc/init.d/knoppix-autoconfig

[pcprofessor]

don't know if I'm on the same wavelength here, but I've been messing with edubuntu which has the Linux Terminal Server Project software as standard and a thin client software called PXES - both easily found on the web. I'm amazed at the results.

Nick