:-) I put my hands on some SCO systems at some customers' and I think Linux is quite _another_planet_ (and among every distribution Debian, also used Yggdrasil, Slackware and RedHat).
Could not agree more. I don't think SCO, even Open Server, is in the same solar system :). Yes but a terminal does NOT go down unless broken, while some of those 386 could go down... ok you may say "we have not only one while the main box is only one"... why should it crash (provided you put a power supply backup of course), I mean why more likely than those 386's? Because it does that lot of things? Then I would have it just handle the sessions on the terminals and the dbase and would connect _another_ box via ethernet for the other tasks. What do you think? The backroom system has never gone down from a hardware failure. It has crashed/locked up for who knows what reason. I know that it should not happen but it can. The registers also have been known to lock up, more so than the backroom. If a register locks up there are other registers that can be used while the other is being re-booted. If the backroom system goes down and you are using just terminals then the whole operation is at a stand still until the system comes back up. You may say, but it only takes 5 minutes to do a complete shutdown and reboot, but this is 5 minutes that our customers have been standing around waiting for us. To them it seems like forever, and does not promote a very professional image. I think the 386's offer more capabilities than a terminal alone. Our machines use a bar code reader, a credit card scanner, control when the cash drawer opens, print to a receipt only printer, and print to the invoice printer. I don't see how you would get this much functionality out of just a terminal. My main thought in favor of the 386's is that even if the backroom goes down, however remote, the operation that the customer sees is still functioning. Yes, not wrong (though I see you resent the posting without this note :-)), but I collected help from very high quality people here (some "big" one via private e-mail), and there could be some Debian package I'm not aware of, and some of the original questions involved Debian-tested hardware. Actually I thought I had caught the first one before it went out :) Agreed then it stays on the list. And thanks a lot to you too! Your Welcome. If you are interseted in any of my thoughts on POS systems, features, capabilites, etc. send me e-mail. A. Paul -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
