I worked for a company doing warranty repairs for some major brands. Other people have mainly listed all the essentials you need, but there is one thing we used a lot which I notice noone has mentioned - the Ultimate Boot CD. I won't go into detail what's on it, but one of the tools we used most were all the hard disk diagnostics tools from all the HD manufacturers. It also has partitioning tools, memtest, virus scanners, and other tools. And best of all, it's free and 100% legal! I recommend it for any PC repair shop as it has saved me and my colleagues a lot of time.
Don't get me wrong, I wasn't criticizing you. I'm all for
people playing with setting up Linux on unconventional
hardware, and to tell you the truth, after seeing your
usage of the customer display, I'm thinking about
getting one for myself to display uptime or something.:-)
What I was criticizing, was the fact that
this story got to/. front page, but that's not your fault.:-)
Anyways, good luck to you and hopefully
you can convince your mom to switch to Linux.;-)
Well, most POS hardware does have 4 - 8 serial
ports, and most printers (like the very common
Epson TM-88 is either serial or parallel, might be
USB versions of them too though but I've never
seen them) and other POS hardware is connected
with the "legacy" serial ports. USB would be great,
but it's just slowly catching on...
The Siemens Beetle's I've used ("Beetle/M" model I think) are actually quite loud in my opinion... seems to be a common problem for a lot of POS hardware to have noisy fans, like Tec ST-60, it's horrible.:-) However, IBM SurePOS 500 is very quiet and also looks very cool.. black'n'all;-)
POS machines are nothing more than PC computers with extra serial ports and different peripherals than "normal" PCs. And the POS software normally runs on DOS or Windows (*gasp*);-)
I really don't see what the big fuss is about, I mean, I've installed Linux on a few different POS machines myself, (I work for a company that makes POS software), and it's just like setting up Linux on a normal PC except for the peripherals.
Why not use your spare processing power for something that actually *matters* like cure for cancer? IMHO that's much more important than whether we are alone in the universe or not or if we can crack some encryption codes.
.. according to Reykjavík Power Company's daughtercompany, Lína.net.
Up to 4.5Mbit connection, at a reasonable price compared to ADSL connections from the phone company...
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Yes, I managed to forget the link - here it is: Ultimate Boot CD
I worked for a company doing warranty repairs for some major brands. Other people have mainly listed all the essentials you need, but there is one thing we used a lot which I notice noone has mentioned - the Ultimate Boot CD. I won't go into detail what's on it, but one of the tools we used most were all the hard disk diagnostics tools from all the HD manufacturers. It also has partitioning tools, memtest, virus scanners, and other tools. And best of all, it's free and 100% legal! I recommend it for any PC repair shop as it has saved me and my colleagues a lot of time.
Benedict
Don't get me wrong, I wasn't criticizing you. I'm all for people playing with setting up Linux on unconventional hardware, and to tell you the truth, after seeing your usage of the customer display, I'm thinking about getting one for myself to display uptime or something. :-)
/. front page, but that's not your fault. :-)
;-)
What I was criticizing, was the fact that this story got to
Anyways, good luck to you and hopefully you can convince your mom to switch to Linux.
Well, most POS hardware does have 4 - 8 serial ports, and most printers (like the very common Epson TM-88 is either serial or parallel, might be USB versions of them too though but I've never seen them) and other POS hardware is connected with the "legacy" serial ports. USB would be great, but it's just slowly catching on ...
The Siemens Beetle's I've used ("Beetle/M" model I think) are actually quite loud in my opinion... seems to be a common problem for a lot of POS hardware to have noisy fans, like Tec ST-60, it's horrible. :-) However, IBM SurePOS 500 is very quiet and also looks very cool.. black'n'all ;-)
POS machines are nothing more than PC computers with extra serial ports and different peripherals than "normal" PCs. And the POS software normally runs on DOS or Windows (*gasp*) ;-)
I really don't see what the big fuss is about, I mean, I've installed Linux on a few different POS machines myself, (I work for a company that makes POS software), and it's just like setting up Linux on a normal PC except for the peripherals.
Why not use your spare processing power for something that actually *matters* like cure for cancer? IMHO that's much more important than whether we are alone in the universe or not or if we can crack some encryption codes.
You can download the (Windows only, sigh) clients from http://members.ud.com/vypc/.
.. according to Reykjavík Power Company's daughtercompany, Lína.net. Up to 4.5Mbit connection, at a reasonable price compared to ADSL connections from the phone company...