I just wanted to let anyone who might be in need of a cheap linux box for whatever reason that
I successfully loaded both redhat 7.3 and Mandrake 8.2 on an Omron POS terminal I got at
Hawaii Computer Recyclers. It comes with a 200mhz processor a 2.1 gig hard drive a 10/100
3C905b TX-NM Nic a floppy drive and a slot where a CDROM can go. I put one in mine to do the
installs. It has two SDRAM slots (comes with 32MB ram) 2 serial ports, two USB ports, 1
parallel port a 4MB onboard video, onboard sound and can take upto a 300mhz processor if you
happen to have one laying around. They had 400 when I bought mine 2 weeks ago and quoted me
105 dollars each. 25 dollars more if you want a cdrom installed. The POS box measures about
4" X 13" X 15", fairly compact. Main drawback is not very upgradable. Since
one of the two pci slots is taken up by the NIC that only leave one pci slot open to ad
another card. Mandrake 8.2 installed flawlessly using graphic installer. Redhat balked at
the graphic installer and had to do a text install. Autopartitioner failed to work as well but
fdisk did the job. After the initial install which failed to detect the onboard audio was
detected and installed by KUDZU on first boot. Although a tougher install after installation
Redhat 7.3 ran great. I may have to drag out a copy of Redhat 6.2 and try it with that. Just
thought someone might be interested. Jeff Zidek
