Semi-OT - Hardening a PC.

Colin McGregor colinmc151-bJEeYj9oJeDQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org
Sun Oct 28 01:58:19 UTC 2007


I was talking to some folks this past week about the
possibility of putting four PCs into a homeless
shelter. This may or may not happen (depends on
everyone from the government grant money people to
shelter staff...).

Still I am in the process of getting my head around
the issues involved in a project like this. The
software is simple / easy, I would do a custom live
CD, likely based on Fedora, as I recently wrote about
Fedora based tools for live CD creation (and liked
what I saw). This hardens the software end of things,
and gets rid of an expensive / breakable part (the
HD). 

The hardware questions are a little tricker, namely I
gather theft is a BIG issue at the shelter. You name
it, and it gets stolen I gather (past efforts along
these lines I gather saw keyboards and mice stolen).
So, how to harden a PC in a way the leaves it usable,
but makes it effectively impossible to steal...

One possible solution that I saw back at the 1993 
World Science Fiction Convention in San Francisco, was
wrapping a PC in a sort of video arcade like case.
With thick (3/4" ?) plywood and a thick sheet of glass
in front of the monitor the machine was HARDENED. The
keyboard was partly wrapped in plywood such that
without a key (and access to the inside of the
machine) you could still type, but not get the
keyboard out without breaking it. In other words a
machine that short of a chain saw isn't going to get
hurt. The machine I saw in San Francisco was deployed
in some laundromats (makes sense, drop your clothes
into a machine and then you have 20 minutes to kill,
could do worse than dealing with e-mail :-) ).

Question is, if the only way this set-up will work
involves getting custom quasi-video arcade style cases
is the only way to go, then I want to know that is
what I am going to have to recommend. Or, are there
solutions as good that don't require the services of a
custom cabinet maker? 

Other issue, the one part the people using the machine
will have to deal with is the keyboard / pointing
device. Now, the San Francisco solution was mouse free
(remember pre-1993 design, so text only menus...).
Still there are keyboards with built in touch pads /
trackballs / other mouse equivalents, but is that the
best route? I assume the keyboard will have to be
replaced from time to time due to wear and / or bodily
fluids (ie: vomit... :-( ). So inexpensive and
washable keyboards would also seem to be desirable,
but again I would like ideas...

Thanks.

Colin McGregor

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