My review of the Wyse Cx0

[AndyO]

You're right, this is not really a vintage computer, dating from around 2010-2011, but it is still worthy of being here because this x86-based system (actually 1GHz VIA Eden C7) can be set up to run DOS or early Windows variants such as 3.0, 95 and 98, for that 'genuine hardware' feel that just doesn't come from emulators.



The Cx0 is smaller than a moderately thick paperback book, stands on 4 slightly bow-legged feet which give it a bit of crab-like appearance, and with PS-2 connectors for keyboard and mouse, has a bit of an early 90's air. Video out is DVI, which also outputs VGA via an adapter. With a suitable adapter it can drive two monitors, but I haven't had any need to try it. There are four USB 2.0 sockets, plus audio in and out, and a gigabit ethernet socket is also provided.

Very basic, though it is quite happy to connect USB devices at startup, so more modern keyboards and mice, floppy, CD and thumb drives work perfectly well, including as bootable resources. Internally, the 'hard drive' is a 44-pin IDE DOM, there's one DDR2 200-pin SODIMM for RAM, and it is possible to add wifi - for which there's an internal connection, and a blanking grommet on the rear panel where the antenna would fit.

Mine is a 2011 vintage C10LE, which came with a 128Mb DOM and 512Mb RAM, and cost $6.50 from eBay, complete with 'ThinOS', which wasn't any use, obviously. I bought a second unit, a 2015 C90LEW, which came with a 4Gb DOM and 2Gb RAM, preinstalled with Windows 7 Embedded, which runs smoothly.

Since I was interested in running DOS, the 512R/128F configuration was plenty enough. Running FreeDOS 1.3-Lite there was plenty of storage left for my fairly extensive software selection, but I switched out the 128Mb DOM for a $6 (eBay again) 2Gb module, and put the full install of FreeDOS 1.4 on it from a USB thumb drive instead. Software was installed from a combination of the thumb drive and a USB floppy drive without any issues whatsoever, and the system has been in use ever since as a 'distraction free' work environment, using a USB mechanical keyboard and mouse (when necessary).

There's just about enough room inside for other storage options such as an SD adapter, but not much else. However, it consumes no more than 7watts when running, and absent a fan is also totally silent. It seems very well ventilated, and the metal construction obviously helps with heat dissipation too.

In use, it's excellent. Faster than just about any DOS platform of the day, and difficult to really fault. An emulator may offer better compatibility for DOS gaming, but that's not really my thing, and for me, having to run DOS on top of Windows, linux or macOS rather gets in the way.

For my use this is a great system which pretty much does what I want it to, and actually rather more. For many, I'd bet this would make for a great platform for tinkering and tweaking, or even as a server, with prices typically around $10 or so. I've seen some on eBay for more, already set up and complete with DOS and games installed and booting from a small USB thumb drive, but thin clients are generally cheap and have proven a lot of fun to play with.

 

[seaken]

Hi @AndyO , thanks for sharing that. I have played around with some similar systems that were made around the time of Vista and Windows 7. I usually end up using Linux. But I am intrigued by your use of FreeDOS on these machines.

I successfully installed FreeDOS on earlier equipment such as single-processor machines meant for Windows 2000 or XP, from around 2000 to 2006. I even installed it on a 486 once. But I usually prefer actual MS-DOS 5.0 for Pentium and earlier and Win98SE for P-II and later. I also am not much of a gamer. I like to play around with my older DOS programs that I once used on my PC's through the Pentium days.

What software are you using on FreeDOS? Have you experimented with Windows 3.x on FreeDOS? Last I heard it was not yet supported but some folks have had some success with it.

Seaken

 

[AndyO]

Hi @seaken , I too much prefer MS-DOS, though that's because the structure is far less complex. The guys writing and maintaining FreeDOS seem to be following a more linux-like approach than anything, and for my uses, that isn't great. The offset of that however is that FreeDOS comes with a wide variety of apps/utilities/games packages which can be easily installed, so out-of-the-box you can get a pretty versatile system.

For my use, I'm rather more interested in the use of some 'classic' DOS apps though, such as Symphony, Ability, Lotus 1-2-3, Works, Word, WordPerfect etc... for which I have packs of install floppies. This makes the Cx0 with its USB compatibility quite attractive since it can even boot from a USB floppy if needed, but also provides a happy hour or so going down memory lane to get all the apps installed.

One or two things I ended up installing from USB thumb drives though. And for the sake of simply messing around with it, I even installed onto a USB thumb drive, and booted and ran FreeDOS from that, with the internal DOM as D: (and even removed entirely). One of the interesting things about this system is how flexible it is with USB devices and boot options through the BIOS, so while I'd expect very poor performance from any flavour of Windows running off a USB drive, it can be done.

As far as I can tell, it's still not compatible with Windows 3.1/3.11 For Workgroups but with later versions, it's just a matter of finding the right drivers.

I am going to experiment with running MS-DOS on the 512R/128F unit I have, and it'll be interesting to then play with some of the early Windows versions on that. Mostly though it's DOS I am most interested in, since I used that extensively in my work for preparation of reports and proposals. Windows, particularly modern varieties, were just far too busy and distracting as a platform, but reverting to DOS made it a lot smoother and much less obstructive to put together complex documents. I hit on the Cx0 as the latest 'modern' hardware with pretty seamless DOS compatibility, yet also not overpowered for the functions I need. I was quite surprised how smoothly and well the 2G RAM/4G Flash unit ran Windows 7 Embedded though, and I've since heard of several of these running Windows 10.

They're obviously quite versatile!

There's a lot of potential in these thin clients generally, I think. That said, when I set out to see if I could get DOS running on modern hardware (I have a handful of 1980's-era DOS systems), I didn't expect to do it for only $6!

 

[AndyO]

I am going to experiment with running MS-DOS on the 512R/128F unit....

Well that didn't go quite as expected. MS-DOS 6.21 (because those were the floppies I had to hand) installed without any problem from my floppy drive, and is notably faster to boot than FreeDOS - about 3 seconds from the Wyse splash screen against FreeDOS at about 30 seconds.

The problem was that running in MS-DOS, there was no USB support, so while the Cx0 would natively boot from a bootable USB device, once in DOS it wouldn't recognise anything but a USB floppy drive - which worked perfectly. No thumb drives or USB CD. However, I was able to install software from floppy and use the floppy drive to move files on and off, so the system was quite usable as such. I didn't try installing Windows via USB bootable media because that isn't really my interest, but I wouldn't expect any great issues as long as appropriate device drivers were available.

USB support seems one area where FreeDOS has broader functionality, because while a USB device can't 'hot swap' it is at least seen and accessed after a reboot. And though MS-DOS (6.21) has the advantage of a smaller footprint, leaving 124Mb available of my 128Mb C drive, a basic 'DOS Only' FreeDOS 1.4 install left 110Mb free.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

Does this machine have anything in the way of a usable sound device inside of DOS?

A few years ago I set up an older Via C3-based thin client almost identical to this Wyse, to the point that that I think it might be a generic OEM version of the same hardware, as a pure DOS machine (running IBM PC-DOS 7/2000), and one of the "perks" the old VIA EPIA motherboards is they have chipset sound hardware that's *partially* compatible with ISA Soundblasters. It has the DAC support that you can use by just setting a BLASTER variable; what's missing is synth/OPL support. That's provided by a TSR that seems to work pretty well but takes a whopping 40K of memory.

As much as I hate to admit it the experience kind of convinced me that if I really cared about DOS gaming that much on hardware that new I'd probably be better off sucking it up and installing Windows 98 to give me virtualized support for sound devices and better memory management. Maybe they fixed this with later devices, but on that EPIA board if you have things like legacy USB support enabled there's basically *no* amount of upper memory space available for functions like LOADHIGH or EMS page frames. I figured out how I could strategically disable and override parts of the upper memory space (by force disabling things like legacy USB, the netboot ROM support, etc) but it still suffers from some annoyances like the VGA BIOS is 48K instead of the usual 32K... etc. These hassles with memory management would seem to apply to running productivity software in addition to games, though? How well does EMS work on the Cx0, are there issues with upper memory being too full to assign a page frame, or does FreeDOS'es memory management use methods to get around that? (I haven't used FreeDOS... basically at all. If I'm crossing that bridge I think I'd rather run DOSEMU under Linux.)

 

[AndyO]

Does this machine have anything in the way of a usable sound device inside of DOS?

A few years ago I set up an older Via C3-based thin client almost identical to this Wyse, to the point that that I think it might be a generic OEM version of the same hardware, as a pure DOS machine (running IBM PC-DOS 7/2000), and one of the "perks" the old VIA EPIA motherboards is they have chipset sound hardware that's *partially* compatible with ISA Soundblasters. It has the DAC support that you can use by just setting a BLASTER variable; what's missing is synth/OPL support. That's provided by a TSR that seems to work pretty well but takes a whopping 40K of memory.

As much as I hate to admit it the experience kind of convinced me that if I really cared about DOS gaming that much on hardware that new I'd probably be better off sucking it up and installing Windows 98 to give me virtualized support for sound devices and better memory management. Maybe they fixed this with later devices, but on that EPIA board if you have things like legacy USB support enabled there's basically *no* amount of upper memory space available for functions like LOADHIGH or EMS page frames. I figured out how I could strategically disable and override parts of the upper memory space (by force disabling things like legacy USB, the netboot ROM support, etc) but it still suffers from some annoyances like the VGA BIOS is 48K instead of the usual 32K... etc. These hassles with memory management would seem to apply to running productivity software in addition to games, though? How well does EMS work on the Cx0, are there issues with upper memory being too full to assign a page frame, or does FreeDOS'es memory management use methods to get around that? (I haven't used FreeDOS... basically at all. If I'm crossing that bridge I think I'd rather run DOSEMU under Linux.)

I think realistically the answer to the sound device question is a 'sort of, yes'. It's SoundBlaster compatible, and for many DOS games it's probably sufficient, but likely not much more than that. I have to admit that not being a gamer, I haven't had any great desire to try it out as a gaming platform, but there are seemingly quite a few DOS games which have been tested and work happily enough on it.

I've run DOS in emulation on Macs, PC and linux boxes to various degrees of satisfaction, but I really like the feel of native DOS (and escaping the need for mice/etc), so have mostly used vintage computers such as Zenith or Toshiba 286 'laptops' or Compaq and NEC lunchboxes, plus a couple of Tandys. The Cx0 was a deliberate step in the search for native DOS on much more modern hardware, and the reason I posted my 'review' here was because it's actually far more successful than I expected it to be. At least in the sense of providing a cheap and plentifully available hardware platform for practical use into the future, where vintage systems are often not reliable enough to be entirely trustworthy. Every piece of home and business productivity software I've tried have worked perfectly - except Tandy DeskMate... and that doesn't work on anything else much anyway.

I'd been a bit scornful of FreeDOS, and really had no reason to use it before now, but this does seem a good circumstance for it, and it does work rather well in this use. It has improved expanded memory management, pretty good device support, and while I know some gamers had problems with a few titles in 1.3 and earlier, these appear to have been resolved in 1.4. It's profligate with storage space by comparison, but you get a lot of add-in functionality and packages if you want it, and my only complaint so far is that it's untidy, though I tried a 'lite' install of 1.3 first, only to find that it wasn't fully functional. There is an expanded memory manager in 1.4 which gives (4, I think) options for 'most efficient' to 'most compatible' at bootup, but I've left it alone and had no problems with any software in use.

As one of those - presumably tiny population of - people who did and still do find DOS a productive and efficient working platform, this Cx0 is actually pretty good, and expanded enough it's quite effective up to at least Windows 7 Embedded. Of course DOS has traditionally been a very basic OS, which implies it's a royal pain to tweak it for special or even individual use cases. I'm not really one of those!

 

[Eudimorphodon]

I think realistically the answer to the sound device question is a 'sort of, yes'. It's SoundBlaster compatible, and for many DOS games it's probably sufficient, but likely not much more than that.

I did some digging around and... do you mean it's "Soundblaster compatible" if you use an emulator driver like SBEMU on it? According to everything I've been able to find it doesn't even have working Windows 9x drivers; the only thing that works on the native hardware under DOS is PC speaker. Did you find some alternative software that enables a "hidden" soundblaster functionality?

 

[AndyO]

I did some digging around and... do you mean it's "Soundblaster compatible" if you use an emulator driver like SBEMU on it? According to everything I've been able to find it doesn't even have working Windows 9x drivers; the only thing that works on the native hardware under DOS is PC speaker. Did you find some alternative software that enables a "hidden" soundblaster functionality?

That's what I meant by 'sort of, yes', SBEMU is loaded by default in FreeDOS during bootup. Can't speak to Windows compatibility and drivers personally as I said, though I think I've seen YT videos of gaming in Windows 95 or 98. There are problems finding drivers these days certainly - thanks mostly to Dell curtailing their support resources, but I can't say I'd venture into that myself since it's not in my area of interest.

 

[johnnycontrario]

I have one and it's a neat little box. It does not have the older VIA chipset that has sound blaster emulation, but I think SBEMU is better anyway. The VIA emulation is glitchy; SBEMU sounds better and seems to have good compatibility.

I haven't tried win 3.1x or 9x yet, but when I looked into it. I think the earliest OS driver support I could find was for Win XP. I suspect those newer chips were just too recent and drivers for older Windows just weren't developed. By Win7, I don't think win 3 or 9x were a priority. Anyway, I don't consider any Windows to be much fun, so I haven't had the motivation to try yet. Lol

 

[AndyO]

I have one and it's a neat little box. It does not have the older VIA chipset that has sound blaster emulation, but I think SBEMU is better anyway. The VIA emulation is glitchy; SBEMU sounds better and seems to have good compatibility.

I haven't tried win 3.1x or 9x yet, but when I looked into it. I think the earliest OS driver support I could find was for Win XP. I suspect those newer chips were just too recent and drivers for older Windows just weren't developed. By Win7, I don't think win 3 or 9x were a priority. Anyway, I don't consider any Windows to be much fun, so I haven't had the motivation to try yet. Lol

I must admit that for my needs - very much NOT gaming or Windows - it's a remarkably cool system, not least because for $6, it's the closest thing to exactly what I need, including beating out actual DOS boxes because it is faster, (theoretically) more reliable, has USB and CD support, and has very low power consumption. That said, admittedly I'm far more interested in what it does and much less so in how it does it.

You're right though that by the time this was on the market there wasn't likely to be much, if any, support for early Windows. Nor any reason to expect it really. That some users have found workarounds and methods is more a testament to how smart some people are than how clever Wyse were in designing a box for unintended uses. The downside is that just about all the support materials and drivers have gone.

My enthusiasm for this box - and others like it too - is that it can be had for very little money, and the supply of them seems almost inexhaustible. So there's a lot of potential for experimentation and working out solutions, and not a lot of cost. In my case, with a 'spare' one, I can have one in regular use, and mess about with the other without risking a production machine, all for less than a $20 outlay for both. And though I think @Eudimorphodon is right that emulation is the way to go for many or most, and there's certainly nothing wrong with that, a box like this one that can be turned into a bare metal solution is far more satisfying to me. Also more productive since there isn't an underlying platform with all its demands and complications to deal with.

As I said at the outset though, the Cx0 isn't really 'vintage computing' so it can't really be expected to be 100% like a vintage computer. It's also not exactly mainstream in the way emulated solutions are, so there's no dedicated/focused groups or individuals working on fixes and advances as there tends to be in emulation, so while this system works remarkably well and almost seamlessly for me, it could take a lot of effort for others.

I can't say I have any affinity with the interest many have in early Windows (or indeed, any Windows). I ran a business 'back in the day' on pre-DOS and DOS computers, and DOS/DOS software does everything I need. One thing the Cx0 lets me do is run just about every app I want, and not have the emu-layer to potentially get in the way/troubleshoot around if things don't work as expected.

All that said, it's a matter of priorities for each individual, and for me it's rather cool having a new(ish) box with solid state drive so I don't have to keep bashing on truly vintage machines until something breaks.

 

[seaken]

Given the more modern approach of FreeDOS it may be a better DOS solution on this Cx0 type equipment. Real MS-DOS is kind of hard to shoe in to equipment made after DOS was abandoned. This one of the reasons FreeDOS was created. It is a kind of continuation of the DOS paradigm without needing the support of MS, who abandoned it. It's more of a community DOS and was targeted at more modern machines form Pentium onward.

Most of my interest in DOS is also production applications often used in small business, and not games. But I do remember when I finally broke down and installed Windows 3.0 that I was impressed with the variety of software available and especially with Multi-media and DTP type stuff. I used Ventura Publisher in DOS (with a GEM interface) but it was hard to keep up with modern printers and other formats for artwork, etc. I moved on to Windows with Serif Page Plus and Serif Draw, etc. I stayed with DOS for text content but switched to Windows for DTP layout, etc. I also liked the CD Players in Windows. I didn't even play with that type of software in DOS.

Seaken

 

[Eudimorphodon]

I can't say I have any affinity with the interest many have in early Windows (or indeed, any Windows). I ran a business 'back in the day' on pre-DOS and DOS computers, and DOS/DOS software does everything I need. One thing the Cx0 lets me do is run just about every app I want, and not have the emu-layer to potentially get in the way/troubleshoot around if things don't work as expected.

Hrm. I dunno, I guess I have to say that if I were running DOS for a real production "thing" I could probably make the case that a good emulator or virtual machine environment would is actually probably simpler to troubleshoot than a late-model bare metal box like that, since the emulator has the freedom to substitute exact virtual copies of "DOS-era" hardware and BIOSes instead of being stuck with something that might have only been guaranteed to be just compatible enough to run the real-mode bootloader for a more modern OS.

(Not to say I didn't have some "fun" solving/working around the issues I ran into when I did the EPIA project, but I can't honestly say the end result was "better" in any meaningful sense than DOSBOX, QEMU, or whatever, on a more modern system. There were a few years from the mid-late 1990's where I was a huge fan of DOSEMU on my Linux machines; I kept Wordperfect 5.1 available that way to me for several years into the 2000's, and while it was kind of a hassle to get it set up it was rock solid after that, and the beauty of running it that way was I didn't have to go through all the ridiculous hassle it takes to, for instance, get DOS networked; I'd just inherit all that functionality from the parent OS... but sure, I guess I can see situations where you explicitly wouldn't *want* that.)

It does not have the older VIA chipset that has sound blaster emulation, but I think SBEMU is better anyway. The VIA emulation is glitchy; SBEMU sounds better and seems to have good compatibility.

There is of course the flip argument that when you're using SBEMU you're *basically* not running DOS anymore; all the soundblaster emulation code is lifted pretty straight out of DOSBOX and, because you're relying entirely on VM8086 mode port trapping, you're limited in terms of compatibility to just what you'd be able to do under, say, Windows 9x or OS/2. But... again, if it does what you want then that's good enough I guess.

I also liked the CD Players in Windows. I didn't even play with that type of software in DOS.

One of the things I was stupidly proud of getting working with that EPIA build is I found a laptop-to-40 pin CD-ROM drive adapter (the case for the system has room for a laptop-size drive) that included the analog 4-pin audio connector, so I'm actually able to play CDs with DOS CD players that just instruct the player to "play". (Verses digitally reading the music off the drive and playing it out the soundcard DAC.) Remember how the original "Quake" came on a CD full of Nine Inch Nails music and it would play a track on repeat as long as you were inside a given level? My EPIA build can do that... including the thing I used to do where instead of sticking the NIN CD in there I'd chuck in a random disk of classical music or novelty bluegrass songs.

 

[seaken]

I have since found some CD program in DOS. But back when I was using DOS only I didn't have a CD attached. I just played records and tapes on the stereo.

The last time I used DOS CD Player I found out that it just keeps playing the CD until you issue a command to stop it. I shut down the program and it kept playing! What the heck? Eventually I figured it out and realized is was a feature.

I also have an old CD player in a 286 and it just plays out the RCA jacks when I push the play button on the front. It can be accessed for files but it doesn't work as a CD Audio player.

Seaken

 

[johnnycontrario]

There is of course the flip argument that when you're using SBEMU you're *basically* not running DOS anymore; all the soundblaster emulation code is lifted pretty straight out of DOSBOX and, because you're relying entirely on VM8086 mode port trapping, you're limited in terms of compatibility to just what you'd be able to do under, say, Windows 9x or OS/2. But... again, if it does what you want then that's good enough I guess.

You're probably right about the port trapping bit. Sure, we could load a more advanced OS and just install DOSBOX, but bare metal DOS + device driver is a shorter walk.

In the context of the Cx0 being a solid DOS machine, SBEMU helps keep that dream alive.

 

[AndyO]

Hrm. I dunno, I guess I have to say that if I were running DOS for a real production "thing" I could probably make the case that a good emulator or virtual machine environment would is actually probably simpler to troubleshoot than a late-model bare metal box like that, since the emulator has the freedom to substitute exact virtual copies of "DOS-era" hardware and BIOSes instead of being stuck with something that might have only been guaranteed to be just compatible enough to run the real-mode bootloader for a more modern OS.

I think it's a matter of preference and familiarity rather than anything else. To me, emulation is a lot of fuss and symptomatic of the broader tendency to increasingly complicate solutions, often at the cost of their effectiveness and reliability. Been there, done that myself in a 40 or so year career in IT. These days I'd rather not have yet another box with yet more regular irritants and nuisances of patches, updates, fixes and maintenance just to run a platform on top of it that doesn't need to change one whit.

Obviously, hence the appeal of vintage DOS machines that do actually do what I want, and subsequently the Cx0, which configured as it is, is near perfect. For you, maybe not and that's fair enough, but I rather think that for little more than the cost of a Starbucks coffee, and having to grapple for 5 minutes with the idiosyncrasies of FreeDOS, if anything, this bare metal solution might actually be TOO simple for those who like to tinker a bit with their computers.

It's surely a great idea being able to substitute exact virtual copies of DOS-era hardware and BIOSes into a VM, but hard to see how that improves and simplifies an actual DOS machine running DOS for a user. It is an interesting debate though.

 

[seaken]

What about printers? Have you tried printing from DOS to a modern printer? Presumably out of the USB ports?

Seaken

 

[AndyO]

What about printers? Have you tried printing from DOS to a modern printer? Presumably out of the USB ports?

Seaken

From the Cx0 I haven't, no. In my workflow I don't have need to, since the system is used to draft documents and materials rather than finalise them. The 'finished' product is copied via USB drive to a modern system - but even then, rarely for printing so much as circulation. There's at least one USB driver for DOS that is said to support printing, but I suspect this could be an area where @Eudimorphodon 's emu solution might be a better option if printing directly is important.

 

[seaken]

I don't remember if I had any DOS software that allowed saving to PDF. I do remember printing to a PostScript file. I also had an "Emulaser" program that would allow saving to a file and then print to an Apple LaserWriter or HP LaserJet.

These days I just print everything to PDF. Sometimes it gets printed to paper, sometimes it doesn't. But I don't use DOS for that. I suspect FreeDOS will support such things but I haven't experimented with that on FreeDOS yet.

Seaken

 

[johnnycontrario]

I forgot to mention that that VIA C* machines work great with DOS slowdown utilities. Speed sensitive programs are no problem.

It's surely a great idea being able to substitute exact virtual copies of DOS-era hardware and BIOSes into a VM, but hard to see how that improves and simplifies an actual DOS machine running DOS for a user. It is an interesting debate though.

It all depends on the application. There is no 1 best solution that applies everywhere to everyone. So to me it's not really a debate, but rather an observation that: hey, this is an option among other options. I personally have a variety of old machines for different purposes and a variety of virtual and emulated machines for others.

 

[AndyO]

There is no 1 best solution that applies everywhere to everyone. So to me it's not really a debate, but rather an observation that: hey, this is an option among other options.

I think this is exactly the point, and one that some tend to forget. Solutions are good if they fit the need, and not so good if they don't. It's really the user's need that matters.

In this case, I do run DOS emulators (typically DOSBox-x) on M1 and M3 Macs, Windows 10 PCs and a couple of linux boxes, and there are times when - for example - DOSBox-x on my M3 MacBook is the exact/best 'fix'. Also times when it really isn't. There are times when 40+ years in computing renders enough wrist injury damage and motor control problems that a mouse-driven system is basically unusable, so however good an emu may technically be, it's not a viable option... or one which remains viable only for a short period of time.

And the other part of it, in my case at least, is that I use DOS for actual productive work, not as a platform to experiment/play/collect so would almost always gravitate to the 'bare metal' DOS machines I have rather than an emu just because they're a more simple way to quickly get at what I need to get done, with the least amount of fuss and potential distractions. Which is what led me to the Cx0, since at $6 and clearly capable of running DOS, it looked like a potential route to get a DOS system on new enough hardware that it would survive my usage intact - and if it didn't, $6 was little enough it wouldn't matter.

My point being that for me, the bare metal DOS solution is generally more seamless and productive, and I'd rather wear out a $6 Wyse than a $250 Compaq. There are other ways to go of course, but comparatively these tend to get a fair amount of air time in discussions, where the use of a thin client such as this one to run DOS doesn't seem to. It seemed a fairly good idea to throw it in the ring as an alternative for those who might be interested or curious.