Dear members,

Here's an update of the Club Rainbow project (thanks to Allan Johansen for referring to us).

With support from everywhere, we have secured 6-7 PC's (of various condition) and 2 of 18 Shuttle xPCs (floppy/CD-less) from Overseas Family School (thanks to Michael Clark).

The distro of choice, as discussed in previous meetups will be Edubuntu 7.04 as it is preloaded with lots of educational apps already.
http://www.edubuntu.o...

Mike Veltman came over to my office and spent whole morning trying to network install but the xPC dont' like Edubuntu and there were some serious disk failures. So we decided to set up these xPC up as diskless Edubuntu workstations running off server, using LTSP
http://www.ltsp.org/...

So - This coming Saturday 8 Jun 2007, I would like to seek volunteers from Meetup Group to go down to Club Rainbow and help perform installation of Edubuntu (standalone or network) and help check the state of PCs.
*********************************************
Venue: Club Rainbow
Address: Block 538 Upper Cross Street #05-263/69 (Singapore 050538)
Date: Saturday 9 June 2007
Time: 0900 hrs to 1230 hrs

I will go down Friday to take stock and post missing cables and peripherals here. If you can help donate those missing items, do bring them along.

Drop me a note darrelcks AT yahoo.com if you can make it Saturday. You may also call me at 90121868. If response is overwhelming, we would probably need volunteers for subsequent trips (if we can't finish in one trip) and also for training them on Edubuntu...thanks for understanding.

Thanks and best regards,
Darrel

Update @ 8 Jun 1550 hrs Link to photos

I went to Club Rainbow this morning to assess the situation before the 'army' rolls in with the big guns. It's a top the famous Hong Lim hawker center with many good food. So before start work, I enjoyed a nice plate of famous Wanton Noodle first.

Then I met Mel and David Miller of Club Rainbow who showed me their proposed computer lab.
Here's a quick run down of what they already have:
A. CPU: (used)
1 - P4 1.5Ghz/128M RAM
1 - AMD 1.4Ghz/256M RAM
1 - P4 1.6Ghz/128M RAM
1 - P3 450Mhz/128M RAM
1 - P3 450Mhz/128M RAM
1 - P4 3.2Mhz (new)/? (should be at least 256M RAM)
- all with CDROM and network. Harddisk status unknown.
2 - Shuttle XPC AMD Athlon XP 1700 (256M RAM)
B. 5 CRT monitors
C. 6 PS2 mouse and 6 keyboards
D. There are no network points although there is a single network port in room and we have to put in a switch and run the LAN cables.

D. Target
- to set up x 5 standalone Edubuntu stations with fully woking Edubuntu
- to set up x 1 Edubuntu LTSP server
- to set up x 2 Shuttle xPC diskless Edubuntu LTSP workstations
- to check hardware and apps

E. Missing
- power strips x 6 ( I will bring down 2 but good idea if others can bring some more)
- power cords x 10
- VGA cables x 5 (for the existing CRT)
- network switch (min. 12 ports)

F. Next Phase Needs
To set up additional 6 workstations using shuttle xPC
- Used CRT x 6 (the Shuttle XPC does not come with monitors/keyboard/mouse)
- Used keyboards x 6
- Used mouse x 6

*********************************
Confirmed going so far:
1. Mike Veltman (with his fabulous network install laptop)
2. Darrel (with 7 copies of Edubuntu CD for install + 2power strips)
3. JunHao (with 30m LAN cabling and crimping tools)
4. Allan Johansen (and son)
5. Anand (with 8-10 power cords and 5-6 LAN cables)
6. Derek Tan (with 10 power cords)
7. San

We still need VGA cables - anyone out there who can contribute please post.

Darrel

Update#1 - Sat 9 Jun 07 See photo update

A team of us arrived at Club Rainbow at 9am. There were:
- myself (Darrel), Mike Veltman (and wife), Kee Wee, San, Fatt Chee, Jun Hao, Ma XY, YuGuo, ZhenHao (if I miss out a name - let me know).

Challenges:
We faced several challenges - mostly bec of old hardware like hardisk problem when doing local install, Can't network boot when trying network installs, bad CD drive, bad network etc.

Accomplishments:
a. JunHao managed to pull network cable from one corner of room to another room
b. Mike setup one higher-end HP PC (2.4Ghz) as Edubuntu LTSP server
c. Mike/KeeWee setup another HP Vectra PC with Edubuntu workstation
d. Found 1 CRT monitor bad
- in summary only 2 stations successfully installed.

Next Phase:
a. Mike will try hooking up the Shuttle xPC as diskless, thin client Edubuntu workstations. If possible, we will set up all as thin client workstations since we have so much problem installing onto local harddisk
b. Darrel to get more Shuttle xPC from Overseas Family School (another 10 maybe).
c. We need 1 more network switch (4 or 5 port). Already got 1 12-port from Anand
d. We are ok with VGA cables but since the Shuttle xPC does not come with monitors, KB/mouse - so we need:
- at least 6 CRT monitors, 6 Keyboards, 6 mouse
- at least 20 power cables

New date to return and try again is next Sat 16 Jun 07

Please post here if you have anything or ideas to contribute.
Many thanks to all who helped.

regards,
Darrel

Donation of Shuttle xPC -

Good news!
Michael Clark got us donation of 24 Shuttle xPC from Overseas Family School.
The PC's were collected and delivered on Thu 28 Jun 2007 by myself and 2 of my student NYP interns Jeremy and Gabriel. Bet we will have fun playing with these babies.

Rough Specs:
Shuttle Model Number and revision:
Shuttle SS40 SIS740+SIS961

HardDisk Model:
Maxtor 6E030L0 30 gb

Specs:
AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1700+
229376k RAM

** Note they are diskless and floppyless but got 2 USB ports in front.

Well done Darrel!

When are you going down to install them?