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From: doner@henri.ucsb.edu (John Doner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re: ROM Disk and other machines?
Message-ID: <7065@hub.ucsb.edu>
Date: 9 Nov 90 16:24:45 GMT
References: <5932@munnari.oz.au> <11074.2736d042@amherst.bitnet> <1990Nov9.032405.13315@cs.utk.edu> <1990Nov9.044036.7385@cs.umn.edu>
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Reply-To: doner@henri.UUCP (John Doner)
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In article <1990Nov9.044036.7385@cs.umn.edu> kanefsky@cs.umn.edu (Steve Kanefsky) writes:
>Come to think of it, I can't imagine how slow it would be to have a lab
>full of Classics running diskless over LocalTalk (or PhoneNet or whatever).
>Perhaps with some extra RAM and a healthy RAM cache...

Yes, I've often thought about the time it takes to set up a roomfull
of Macs over Appletalk.  One thing we tried a few years ago was to
provide each with a floppy configured to set up a ramdisk upon
startup, and then copy various programs and files over from a server.
This worked reasonably well, but was slow when every student in the
room was simultaneously trying to copy the same stuff over the net.

But it would seem that an Appletalk broadcast mode would solve the
problem in such a situation.  Normally, a packet is sent from one
sender to one receiver, and is ignored by all other nodes.  I see no
hardware reason why several stations couldn't simultaneously receive
the same packets.  There would be problems of sychronization in
getting started, but in principle you ought to be able to boot all the
machines at once this way.  However, I don't think Appletalk software
offers this sort of broadcast mode; am I right?

John E. Doner	       | "The beginner...should not be discouraged if...he
Mathematics, UCSB      | finds that he does not have the prerequisites for
Santa Barbara, CA 93106| reading the prerequisites."
doner@henri.ucsb.edu   |      --Paul Halmos, Measure Theory