The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (19 January 2023):
dickless workstation
Extremely pejorative hackerism for "diskless
workstation".
[Jargon File]
(1995-03-28)
The Jargon File (version 4.4.7, 29 Dec 2003):
dickless workstation
n.
Extremely pejorative hackerism for ‘diskless workstation’, a class of
botches including the Sun 3/50 and other machines designed exclusively to
network with an expensive central disk server. These combine all the
disadvantages of timesharing with all the disadvantages of distributed
personal computers; typically, they cannot even boot themselves without
help (in the form of some kind of breath-of-life packet) from the server.