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THE SOFTWARE SKINNY

Datalight’s ThinSystem includes Datalight Sockets, WinLight, Citrix WinFrame client software, a VT100 terminal emulator, and ThinSystem configuration utilities. Datalight Sockets is a Winsock 1.1–compliant TCP/IP stack. WinLight is Datalight’s implementation of Bill’s most famous work.

Our ThinSystem requires a fully compatible MS-DOS operating system. ROM-DOS fits the bill here and is included with the development kit. One extra that ROM-DOS brings to the table is the ability to interface with Datalight’s FlashFX. FlashFX works with ROM-DOS to eliminate the spinning mechanical stuff.

Recall that data is sent and received between the client system and server in small packets. By design, there is no continuous datastream. If we want to transport these packets of data via an NIC, the SBC-MediaGX Ethernet interface requires the correct driver. Because the ThinSystem can be run on many different embedded platforms, it will obviously encounter many differing NICs. The SBC-MediaGX uses the Realtek RTL8139A Ethernet controller.

Realizing that design engineers have better things to do than run down obscure NIC drivers via the Internet, the Arcom/Datalight ThinSystem development kit comes loaded with the correct Realtek NIC driver. As well, standard drivers like the NE2000 driver are included on the CD. For those choosing to run ThinSystem on a desktop and other special cases, the CD documentation provides a URL for a good source of packet drivers.

ThinSystem configuration depends on who’s doing the configuration and his or her goals and expectations. A designer, like you, would have a nuts-and-bolts approach to configuring a ThinSystem client, whereas an end user wouldn’t be concerned with the hows and whys. They’d just want it to work. An administrator would be concerned with how the ThinSystem software could be configured to interact seamlessly with the ThinSystem designer’s efforts and the user’s goals. Let’s take a look at this as a designer from the administrator’s view.