Diskless Windows 98 Nodes

[Tony Tofts]

Hi all,

Anyone interested in Diskless win98 nodes for HA?

Here's some pictures of one I have running at the moment
<a href="http://www.xplhal.com/xpl_diskless.htm";>http://www.xplhal.com/xpl_diskless.htm</a>

What I'm looking for is suggestions for use/applications, please.

Here's a few of my thoughts
Backup xPLHal controller
Add a 4/8 port serial card for xPL serial node
MP3/Video player
Stream Tivo recordings to tv's
Webcam server

I'm going to add a wirless nic to the first one and place it in the garage,
to use as a wireless mp3 player and xPL serial node for my weather station.

For those interested in the technical aspect it works like this,
Boot a special linux kernel via PXE
The kernel boots a compressed dos floppy image that logs onto the network
and grabs a compressed windows 98 image
And then the windows 98 image is booted up

All this runs in memory only (using a ramdrive, so it run's fast)
I havent tried to cut down win98 and have installed .net framework etc so
my
image is big
Mine is currently a 218mb (physical) image, with 100mb of free space for
installing more stuff.
Most stuff (e.g. xpl app's) can be installed on a network share

Boot time from switch on to desktop is about a minute (but you can easily
reduce this with a smaller image).

My memory is 512mb, with 64mb for video, 230mb for ramdisk and remainder as
memory for win98.

A how-to will be published as soon as I can find the time to write it and
check it.

Oh, and everything (except your hardware and win98 licence(s)) is free -
providing you have a capable dhcp server.

Regards
Tony