Minimal H/W configuration??? (Terminal Server?)

[Davin Yap]

I was just wondering how practical it would be to use a bare-bones 386
box running xenix as a terminal server.  I'd appreciate answers to any of
the following questions or any suggestions in general.  As a barometer
the cost of a 16 port terminal server here in Toronto is about $13,000 CDN
(or $10,800 US).  For those of you who don't know what a terminal server
is, it's just a box you attach to your ethernet, with lots of serial
ports you can attach terminals to, and login to other machines.

The idea is to buy a cheap 386 box, sans HD, an ethernet board, a
couple(?) serial port boards, and (I suppose) run tcp/ip, then telnet to
the various hosts.

Questions:

1)  Is it viable to run Xenix without a HD, even with no entries in the
    crontab (geez I don't even know if Xenix has a crontab :-), and just
    the bare minimum of processes running?  I'd like to use one perhaps
    two 1.44 meg drives.

2)  I'm assuming you can run tcp/ip under xenix.  Am I assuming too much?

3)  What is the maximum number of serial ports one can access under
    Xenix?  What is the PRACTICAL limit (as a note, I've been told you
    can't have more than 8 serial ports on a PC, but I'm assuming that
    this is under DOS)?

4)  How much ram would you need for such an implementation?  That is, if
    each user is running a telnet, how much memory do you need for each
    user?  Here, I'm assuming that it's koser to put 'exec telnet' as the
    first line in each users .profile (there's just gotta be a bourne
    shell :-).  How much memory does the kernal require?

5)  How much (approx.) would a unlimited user, no frills Xenix cost?


If this turns out to be a viable alternative (10.8K US is a lotta dough
for something not really impressive), would anyone be interested in going
into business with me?  You can have the US, I'll take Canada ;^)
We can cooperate by ironing out the technical difficulties, and perhaps
go in on some bulk purchases.  There are worst ways of making a profit
(I don't know the smiley for tongue-in-cheek)

But seriously - THANKS to all who reply,

Davin
--
GOAL:  To dance the light fan- |Davin Yap, Mechanical Engineering, U of Toronto
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