NCD Explora Terminal, WinCenter, and NCDware

Make no mistake­the NCD Explora is an X-terminal productthrough and through. NCD has made no attempt to customize Explora or adapt it tothe Windows NT market. Just getting Explora to work in an NT-only environmentcan be challenging, because Explora is incapable of fully booting from ROM andwants to boot from a UNIX system. Unfortunately, I didn't happen to have a UNIXsystem lying around that week, but then again, such situations make this NCDstory interesting.

If you put aside the Explora's X-centric nature, you find a prettyinteresting desktop unit. The base unit is a small box with connections forEthernet, keyboard, monitor, mouse, parallel port, serial port, and a PC Card(formerly PCMCIA) slot. You can buy the monitor, keyboard, and mouse from NCD,or you can supply your own. As with most X-terminals, you configure the Explorawith an IP address (it does not support DHCP), and you can configure a UNIX hostfor it to boot from. Again, booting the Explora was a problem for me until Idiscovered that NCD offers an add-on software product called NCDware that letsyou boot X-terminals from the NT server that hosts the X-terminal sessions.

Like the other vendors I reviewed, NCD offers its version of WinFrame,called WinCenter (see Screen A). But WinCenter goes beyond WinFrame because itadds support for X-terminal access. To enable this support, you must firstinstall NCD's OEM version of WinFrame on your designated server and then installa second WinCenter add-on (the WinCenter package includes both WinFrame and theadd-on). Once the add-on is in place, your server can accommodate access fromboth ICA and X-terminals­if you can get your X-terminals to boot in thefirst place.

The final piece was an NCD product, NCDware. This product is an add-on thatinstalls after WinCenter (including the X-terminal add-on). NCDware includes animplementation of Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) and the download codefor the Explora terminal. With NCDware in place, I booted the Explora terminaland tested it using NCD's WinCenter software. Note that NCDware lets youdownload other types of X-terminals, but NCDware includes download code for onlya limited set of X-terminals.

I tested ICA access to WinCenter on the Wyse terminal and the TektronixNetstation terminal in ICA mode. I also tested X access on the NCD Exploraterminal, the Tektronix Netstation terminal in X mode, Insignia's NTRIGUE MacClient (an X-terminal emulator), and both NCD's PC-Xware and Hummingbird'sExceed X-terminal emulation software running on an NT Workstation system. I hadno problems with NCD WinCenter's support for ICA or X-terminals. Also, NCDExplora's performance was close to the Wyse ICA terminal's (though Explora had aslight performance edge).

Will you want to consider the NCD Explora terminal? I really liked the unitafter I overcame my problem with booting it. From a broader perspective,however, you'll probably want to stay away from this unit if you don't haveexperience with X-terminals or you don't have X-terminals in your network.However, if you have developed a taste for X-terminals, the NCD Explora isclearly worth considering. The same applies for NCD's WinCenter and optionalNCDware software products: If you don't have X-terminals in your network, youwon't find much of interest here. If X-terminals are in your network (or in yourfuture), though, you might get excited about X-to-NT access and booting yourX-terminals from an NT server.