[Linux-ham] Followup to old PCs for ARES discussion with Shelley at T4T (United Way)

[Jeremy Portzer]

I'm forwarding this to the teaming@ and linux-ham@ lists, as I feel that
this something that either/both of these groups should work on.

--Jeremy

-----Forwarded Message-----
From: Tanner Lovelace <lovelace at wayfarer.org>
To: The Steering Committee for TriLUG <steering at trilug.org>
Subject: [Steering] [Fwd: Followup to old PCs for ARES discussion with Shelley at T4T (United Way)]
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 15:40:06 -0500

What do you guys think about this?

Cheers,
Tanner

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Followup to old PCs for ARES discussion with Shelley at T4T 
(United Way)
Date: 10 Feb 2004 19:57:53 -0000
From: Mark W4CHL <6m6le1002 at sneakemail.com>
To: lovelace at wayfarer.org

Tanner,

If you are at DFMA tonight, perhaps we can chat briefly about a 
discussion I had with Shelly Bowers-Roghelia (and she can fill in 
tidbits I didn't catch).

Net is I now have a dozen or so 386/486 and a few 1999-2000 vintage 
Pentium laptops in the trunk of my Prius.  What I had in mind was 
pulling together some common builds for APRS and emergency services use 
in shelters. Though I tinker with Linux having worked with AIX servers 
for some time, I am not a guru of the build cycle, which is part of why 
I am approaching you.

Is there enough interest from Trilug or other computer saavy groups you 
are involved in to assist our ham community in getting this going ?

I see this as a great way to get off Micro$oft stuff and onto Linux, 
though I run RHEL and Fedora on a machine each (and tinkered with 
Lindows dual boot on my primary work laptop), it is still tinkering.  My 
network backup is based on Windows version of Retrospect after tha old 
Mac died off years ago.

Triangle United Way has an agreement with Microsoft that lets many of 
these older laptops, and all their new builds for non-profits, go out 
with older Micro$oft builds on them for a fantastic price. Catch is they 
aren't doing any Linux builds. But they have no problem helping us with 
setup of build sessions where they don't staff it, with older gear that 
would make it to their annual "yard sale" (just completed).

Certainly there is enough in the way of APRS, packet in general, support 
software for Linux on older laptops. Even for other digital modes on 
older laptops (provided minimum compatibility of sound card support).

Interested ?  And I will propose to the Phillips ARC kids as well, may 
be something that sparks interest (along with a free laptop drawing at 
end of meeting perhaps ) ?

In the long run, it would be great to get a regional community together 
on placing appropriately built PCs with those who otherwise wouldn't 
have a PC for homework or Internet access.  There are many more issues 
to fulfilling such a long term  goal, perhaps starting with emcom use of 
PCs for shelter and other ARES served agencies and graduating to other 
things is of interest ?

More to come,

Cheers & 73 de Mark W4CHL
http://rtpnet.org/parc


_______________________________________________
Steering mailing list
http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/steering
-- 
/---------------------------------------------------------------------\
| Jeremy Portzer        jeremyp at pobox.com      trilug.org/~jeremy     |
| GPG Fingerprint: 712D 77C7 AB2D 2130 989F  E135 6F9F F7BC CC1A 7B92 |
\---------------------------------------------------------------------/
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://www.trilug.org/pipermail/linux-ham/attachments/20040210/dfac3ff7/attachment.bin