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From: doner@henri.ucsb.edu (John Doner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: Mac Classic question
Message-ID: <7777@hub.ucsb.edu>
Date: 10 Dec 90 22:43:01 GMT
References: <48129@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> <1990Dec2.093816.26712@world.std.com> <1990Dec4.193225.16330@DMI.USherb.CA> <1990Dec10.001749.9393@midway.uchicago.edu>
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Reply-To: doner@henri.UUCP (John Doner)
Organization: University of California, Santa Barbara
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In article <1990Dec10.001749.9393@midway.uchicago.edu> francis@math.uchicago.edu (Francis Stracke) writes:
>In article <1990Dec4.193225.16330@DMI.USherb.CA> mazu@terre.DMI.USerb.CA
>(Marc Mazuhelli) writes:
>
>>What about this scenario:  you power-up your (diskless) Mac, it boots
>>from its ROM disk, establishes a connection with an AppleShare
>>server (running ApleShare version 3 (or 4 :-)) where your real system 
>>folder is (with all its inits, fonts, ...).  Then it becomes a bit less
>>obvious...  The Mac does a "pseudo-reboot" with the remote system
>>folder, loading all the inits, cdevs, ... and (after a few minutes)
>>you're up and running!
>
>BLEAH! Major problems.  Speed (most obvious, probably crippling
>just by itself).  Unless Apple did some really tough stuff to the
>System, you'd need a separate copy for every machine on the net.

A better thing for it to do is to copy the system, finder, etc., to a
local RAMdisk.  I've been using a MacPlus in much this way for some
time now.  It works pretty well; I keep exactly one floppy by the
machine to boot up with, install the RAMdisk, and supply a copy of the
system for the RAMdisk.  All the applications I use with that machine
are out on the server.  If the ROM of the MacPlus had the system,
finder, etc. plus the code to create the RAMdisk, I wouldn't need the
floppy at all.  Sure, programs are slower to load than off a hard
disk, but probably faster than off a floppy.  In any case, for many
programs, most of the loading is done during initialization, so you
don't get too much net activity later.  Furthermore, with adequate
memory, you can copy applications over the network, so you get your
very own local copy on the RAMdisk.
John E. Doner	doner@henri.ucsb.edu	(805)893-3941
Dept. Mathematics, UCSB, Santa Barbara, CA 93106