Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!brunix!doorknob!twl From: twl@cs.brown.edu (Ted "Theodore" W. Leung) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc Subject: Re: Not another NeXT defector???!!! Message-ID: Date: 8 Nov 90 19:25:26 GMT References: <46372@apple.Apple.COM> <1990Nov7.212944.11043@agate.berkeley.edu> <1990Nov8.175911.16932@agate.berkeley.edu> Sender: news@brunix.UUCP Organization: Department of Computer Science, Brown University Lines: 48 In-reply-to: knrgroup@garnet.berkeley.edu's message of 8 Nov 90 17:59:11 GMT >>>>> On 8 Nov 90 17:59:11 GMT, knrgroup@garnet.berkeley.edu (Raymond group) said: > This is what I've been saying all along. Yes, NeXT networks require some > maintenance like all "Unix" networks. Single user NeXTs, however, don't > call for Unix system administration. As for networks, I've never set up > a network of Macs so I don't know how easy or tough it is. However, I do > know that AppleTalk is the symptom of the disease that is Apple's > non-standard networking scheme. If you want to hook up anything other than > an Apple to a LocalTalk network, you're going to have to invest in an extra > board and accompanying software. The NeXT handles both thin and twisted-pair > Ethernet, the network standard for the rest of the world. Part of the reason for the "disease that is Apple's non-standard networking scheme" is so that setting up a network of Macs is easy. By the way, that particular disease is hardware independent. It runs just as nicely under thin net or twisted pair ethernet. You can plug in a card and it just works. Trivial network config required. > Precisely. Someone has written a driver for virtually everything under the > sun for 4.3BSD Unix. Did you know that there is even a driver for drum > memory on the NeXT! (Not that it's particularly useful nowadays.) A Mac > also needs drivers for different devices. Thus, a Mac user cannot take > a peripheral only originally intended for large Unix machines and connect > it to a Mac without going through the pain of writing a driver. Have you > ever heard of a Mac user writing a device driver? I don't think so. Actually, I have heard of Mac users writing device drivers. I'm still waiting for you to give an example of one peripheral that you can hook up to your NeXT today, that can't also be hooked up to a Mac. RA81's and RAID's excluded of course :-). If you can hook it up to your NeXT via SCSI, a Mac user can hook it up to a Mac via SCSI. All you've claimed is that someone will have to write a device driver, but that's true for both sides. So name your peripheral. If you can't name one, then your claim doesn't hold much weight, because it doesn't provide the user any additional functionality. If a new peripheral comes along, for which there is a SCSI interface but no drive, both NeXT and Mac users will have to get device drivers written, so your point is also moot. You also forget that adding totally new device drivers requires a kernel rebuild on many versions of UNIX. Has NeXT made that possible? There's also the hacking on /etc/config and the requisite mknod's to be done. Is that easier than dropping a file into the system folder? You and I might not blink, but your average user might. Ted -- -------------------------------------------------------------------- Internet/CSnet: twl@cs.brown.edu | Ted "Theodore" Leung BITNET: twl@BROWNCS.BITNET | Box 1910, Brown University UUCP: uunet!brunix!twl | Providence, RI 02912