[luau] Beta of small system image for POS terminal ready

[R. Scott Belford]

On Saturday 15 June 2002 22:04, you wrote:
> Ever get a chance at this?  If not, I almost have it ready with an
> inittab and startup scripts (in other words, a full system basically)
> that should be able to boot without modification.
>
> Not quite ready yet though...

I did not get the chance to test it, yet.  I have been besieged by breaking 
boxes.  I have built the box that I will use as a test platform for future 
registers.  It is based on the following motherboard:

http://usa.asus.com/mb/socket370/tusi-m/overview.htm

The tusi-m has this "certification" for compliance with the major distros, it 
is found here:

http://www.keylabs.com/linux/results_server.html#asus

I like Asus.  I want a celeron based box because I want it cool.  The holes 
where the registers stay have a way of getting hot.  The current test box has 
a celeron 766 at 66mhz and 64mb of ram.  It has a 20 gb 5400 rpm maxtor hard 
drive.  I will order an ide flash drive soon.  I will also order extra pole 
displays and printers in the next 10 days.  This will enable more continuous 
testing and piddling.  I am working on securing some space near the stadium 
for hands on tweaking.  I want this to be an area open for this project as 
well as the LTSP for Hawaiian schools.  It may be more compelling to some of 
you to get involved if you don't have to go so far.

Ray asked about the screen.  I will share an observation about accessing this 
POS application via ssh or telnet from three unix like distros.  For users 
accessing the POS application, their term emulation is set to scoansi in 
their .bash_profile.  A keymapping file is also loaded.  Function keys are 
very important for the application.  When I access it via a mac running OSX, 
the emulation is horrible and the function keys do not work.  When I access 
the app from Mandrake's distro, most of the POS screens are okay, some do not 
align properly, and the function keys do not work.  When I access the 
application from RedHat's distro, the emulation has no problems and the 
function keys work fine.  I really don't know enough to understand why this 
is, but it is.  It may be important.  

Anyhow, I have not yet tested your work.  You are a good soul to continue 
endeavoring.  Thanks.  I am getting very close to some substantial testing 
and hopefully some progress.  I am about to be less busy, so my latency 
should improve.  Despite my recent thundering silence on the matter, I cannot 
wait to make this a success.

scott