We were building distance learning systems and the classroom controllers were low powered PC hardware running DOS. These systems were connected to the system c

We were building distance learning systems and the classroom controllers were low powered PC hardware running DOS. These systems were connected to the system controller by Lantastic networking (we had no TCP/IP stack on the classroom controllers) and yet we needed both network monitoring (without SNMP) and status information related to the classroom hardware (tied to the classroom controller via RS-485) as well as the classroom's state (was it being used, which devices were powered on, etc.) We ended up writing a device driver for the DOS machines that could message other Lantastic nodes with the system's current status. Once we had the status stored back at the system controller, we needed a way to allow administrators, operators and teachers to easily see the overall status ... my initial choice was to provide the data via a web server since the system controller had a TCP/IP stack and was connected to "the outside world". In 1995, what do you use to write a web server that has no static content? Tcl/Tk was one of the first scripting languages to include the ability to open a "server socket" and it provided lots of libraries that made it easy to template text (in this case text/html). We ended up with one summary page that displayed the status of the entire system and a detail page for each classroom. There were no graphics, system status was shown via text and colored backgrounds using in-line styles, and the server automatically redirected you to the index if you asked for a non-existent page. Sadly, the system never made it to production as we found we also needed a web-based method for scheduling classes, provisioning users, etc. This system was written in (pre-Java) ColdFusion and the monitoring functions were migrated into that system.