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

[Guest]

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