Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!virtech!cpcahil
From: cpcahil@virtech.uucp (Conor P. Cahill)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.i386
Subject: Re: Distribution media survey
Message-ID: <1990Aug28.130345.16943@virtech.uucp>
Date: 28 Aug 90 13:03:45 GMT
References: <1337@mtxinu.UUCP>
Reply-To: cpcahil@virtech.UUCP (Conor P. Cahill)
Organization: Virtual Technologies Inc., Sterling VA
Lines: 23

In article <1337@mtxinu.UUCP> shore@mtxinu.COM (Melinda Shore) writes:
>I'm trying to get a sense of what distribution media people would
>prefer for a large-ish OS installation.  The distribution is large
>enough for us to rule out floppies.  I did an informal survey at
>our booth at the last Usenix, and people overwhelmingly favored 
>floppy tapes.  What would people here prefer?  Are there media that
>are completely out of the question?  

The most common media that you will find out in the real 386 "unix" world 
will be 60MB (QIC-24) tapes.  Any of the higher capacity drives (120MB, 150MB,
320MB, etc) *should* be able to read the 60MB tapes without a problem (all the
ones that I have tried do).

My experience says that floppy tapes are somewhat rare under unix (I think they
are more prevalent under DOS).

Completely out of the question media would be any new technology (like DAT,
or rare (in the pc unix arena) old technology (9-track) and QIC tape > 60MB.

-- 
Conor P. Cahill            (703)430-9247        Virtual Technologies, Inc.,
uunet!virtech!cpcahil                           46030 Manekin Plaza, Suite 160
                                                Sterling, VA 22170