[Dxspider-support] Spider running under DOS

[Mike Lewis]

Hi,
 
Came into a surplus single board computer recently and it has piqued my
interest for investigating whether I could figure a way to host my
Spider cluster on it. The system is a Pentium class system with 128 MB
memory, 2 serial ports, and a 10/100 base T ethernet connection - seems
like that should be enough horsepower. The system has a 64 MB flash
disk, and I am fascinated by the concept of trying to get a setup that
is able to boot up without a keyboard, mouse, or monitor attached, and
starts up and runs the cluster. This would require running either under
DOS, some small Linux install, or maybe a Lite version of say Win98
(have seen one that is supposedly 8 MB). The attraction would be in
having a dedicated cluster that would be very robust, without tying up
the extra peripherals (keyboards, monitors, or hard drives), or taking
up the extra space.
 
Obviously, there are many hurdles to overcome. The first is, if I am not
able to get a suitable Linux (first choice), or Lite Windows running,
does anyone know of anyone successfully running Spider under DOS, using
a DOS version of Perl (I found a couple), and the DOS based ethernet
driver for the network port? Is there a DOS based TCP/IP stack out there
that could reasonably be interfaced? Or has anyone got an entirely
different way to approach the problem? I could of course embark on the
task of writing a my own Cluster software, but I would prefer to stick
with Spider if there is a reasonable way to do so.
 
My current cluster supports a 2m RF link as well as being connected into
the network to another Spider cluster, so I guess that I have all the
issues regarding AX.25 to a KISS TNC over a serial port to deal with as
well. If anyone has any ideas, let me know, and if this seems to be too
off-topic for the list, please feel free to email me directly
(mlewis at digitalglobe.com)
 
Tnx es 73 de KE0MF/Mike
 
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