Help on Planning LAN Upgrade by a Novice Sysad

[Chriseli de Rama <chriseli@hh.bc.ca>]

Hello. We're planning to have an upgrade of our systems and I have been
given the task to implement the upgrade using a very tight budget. I'm
having difficulties because this is my first job since I graduated from the
university and I have not been given any apprenticeship/guidance from a
more mature system administrator in our firm (since I am the only tech
person in the building) or training from an educational institution that
provides sys admin/integration course (I can't afford to enrol in a course
and another reason for joining SAGE). We didn't have any networking/sys
admin and integration course in our computer science curriculum back in
school. I've been sys administering for a year now and I still feel dum.

Status Quo:
We currently have a P66/48MB RAM Eisa box running SCO Unix 3.2v.4.2 and
another unix box that serves as an application server solely for
accounting for which the specs are not worth mentioning. We have about 40
serial character-based terminals connected to the SCO box and 5 in
accounting and we definitely have no internet connection. We just use uucp
to poll our external email. 

This is my plan:

         Box A                                         Box B
 ------------------------               -----------------------------------
 |      Windows NT      |               | SCO UnixWare 7                  |
 |  Application Server  |               |                                 |
 |                      | <-----------> | WordPerfect 5.2+/6.0            |
 | Accounting           |               | Faximum                         |
 | PhoneTrak/CopiTrak   |               | Calendar/Scheduling App         |
 | Other Windows App    |               | Email                           |
 ------------------------               | Internet                        |
     |     |       |          ----------| Other Unix Apps                 |
     |     |       |          |         -----------------------------------
 Printers* |  Photocopiers    |                         |
           |                  |                         |
    Telephone System          |                         |
                              |                         |
                              |                         |
Character Terminals <----------                         |
                              |                         |
			      |  		  ------------
Desktop PCs <------------------                   | Firewall |
                              |                   ------------
                              |                         |
Printers <---------------------	         		|
						 ** INTERNET **

Box A - P66/48MB RAM, 3.5GB HD space
Box B - New box: PII 350Mhz, 64MB RAM, 4.5 HD space
* - optional

People using character terminals as well as those using PC's should be
able to access the character-based accounting software and other windows
apps that would be installed in the future on the NT Box. This is my plan.
My boss wanted it the other way around. Unixware (and all other unix apps)
on Box A and NT (and the accounting package) on Box B and have all the
PC's connected to Box B. I wasn't comfortable with my boss' setup so I
thought of my own. My primary reason for creating another setup is because
I don't want to see UnixWare be put to waste by not optimizing its
features/capabilities and have NT do all the important tasks. 

Do you think this will work? I'm sorry if I sound like an idiot but I'm 
totally lost. I just wanted to device a more practical and efficient plan 
that would be easier to implement (for a novice sys ad like me) and 
convince my boss that it's better.

Thanks for your help.

Chriseli