Looking for suggestions on converting industrial PC equipment from win311 to Linux
 

Hi everyone .... this is a bit of a long post .. sorry

Just wondering if anyone can offer suggestions or assistance with a task I wish to undertake. I have a large number of industrial computers (approx 200) in a commercial manufacturing environment. These machines are used to control manufacturing machines as part of a factory automation system. They are all running 16bit windoz win311 at the moment and a custom DOS application.

I wish to convert them all to Linux, the DOS application we can port without too many problems. What im really looking for is suggestions/help on the best approach to convert the OS.
There's many different hardware configurations, but generally limited RAM (64Meg) some only have 128Meg flash drives for the H/D we probably wont be needing a GUI, but will need samba and mysql
Main problem is we need to be able to copy all the Linux install files to the machines over the network with win311. Most of the machines do not have accessible drives (ie no CD or floppy and no USB support in WIN311) added to this is the fact many of the machines are in remote locations so some sort of automated install would be great (ok i know i have a long wish list lol)

Thanx for takeing the time to read this and for any help you can offer

Cheers

What about PXE install? Does the hardware support PXE?
Or you can start linux from DOS using loadlin.exe

Linux can run on some pretty light hardware, but what you're describing might be a little too light. Maybe possible, but you're quite near the edge, if not past it.

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About the smallest Linux you can find is Damn Small Linux or the stripped down version of Slax. Those will take about 50Mb of your disk. Add to that mysql and samba, and you're starting to push things. Remember that you will need to have room for your existing Windows installation AND the new Linux stuff at some point in time. I think that 128Mb you reported might be too tight.

BTW, you said some of these had 128Mb flashdrives for main storage. Did we even have flash memory of this capacity back when Win311 was in use? I don't know the answer, but it would surprise me if such a thing existed (and was affordable by normal people).

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64Mb of ram is not much. You can boot one of the above Linux distros with that, but when you fire up mysql you're probably going to be swapping to disk - and that means SLOW. If your "disk" is actually flash memory, that means EVEN SLOWER. I would not expect your flash memory to last very long with the high write cycles that swapping would cause.

If you're currently running something as old as Win311 on these computers, I also fear you may be using a 386 processor. I'm not sure about this, but I think most Linux distros want at least a 486 class machine these days.

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I would carefully consider the "pain vs. gain" of your planned move to Linux. I predict a lot of work would be required. Working remotely has definite risks, especially in your environment. I'm sure you wouldn't want to be the one to blame if the factory machinery shuts down. I would also consider any computer old enough to still have Win311 installed to be well past it's service life. I would attach a DNR order to this hardware (i.e., if it dies, "Do Not Resusitate").

I don't know what you've got running as far as PCs are concerned, but an update should be a SERIOUS consideration. With Dell and their 400 US desktops out (said 200 machines approz., right?), then I'd almost be tempted to buy a few of them and wipe the HDD, and either use a LiveCD installed or just use the CD itself. with about 256Mb RAM, unless you've got a fairly heavy program (Robotics I'm guessing is what your automatic, so the program should be fairly light unless there are allot of sensors involved), DSL would be a good choice.

Lacking that, see about upgrading RAM at least and put a refurbished, heck, even a 2.4 GB HDD into them to use for swap (which means SLOW, but not thumbdrive slow), and just more RAM. I don't know much about MySQL and Samba, but RAM will be your biggest issue far as I can see.

Auto-install w/ a server shouldn't be too hard. Use a laptop (or server may work) to install the distro (cp /new_os_name /mnt/hdb or some such animal), and then, long as the configuration isn't that different between them, you can then load the program into memory.

That Win server might cause a little bit of a headache, too, but I know servers are not that easily replaced in manufacturing.

I hope this helps, or at least got someone to thinking on something better.

Good luck.