Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!osborn
From: osborn@cs.utexas.edu (John Howard Osborn)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: floppy drives / old cubes
Message-ID: <17679@cs.utexas.edu>
Date: 6 Feb 91 15:19:18 GMT
References: <1991Feb5.153658.24248@athena.mit.edu> <1991Feb06.034803.5577@ecst.csuchico.edu>
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 26

In article <1991Feb06.034803.5577@ecst.csuchico.edu> tempest@ecst.csuchico.edu (Kenneth K.F. Lui) writes:
>In article <1991Feb5.153658.24248@athena.mit.edu> jnicolas@athena.mit.edu (Julien J Nicolas) writes:
>>am curious to find out what old cube owners are doing: buying an
>>external floppy disk drive (e.g. the PLI drive at $500), installing an
>>internal drive (which would require getting a new face plate -NeXT seems
>>unwilling to provide them), using the E-net to download the software
[wants NeXT to see faceplates from the new cubes]

Just for the general awareness, I finally got an answer for my question:
"Do third party external drives function the same as the new internal drives
 from an OS/user point-of-view."

I called a couple of manufacturers, didn't get my calls returned (I didn't
try too hard, actually) and ended up calling NeXT.  The answer is "yes."
These 3rd party drives and the NeXT internal drive are both SCSI devices.
(This is different from EVERY system I've seen, including Suns and Macs,
but it certainly makes sense.)

As usual, the 1-800 staff at NeXT has hyper-efficient, friendly, and all
other nice things.

-
-John H. Osborn
-osborn@cs.utexas.edu