Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!garnett
From: garnett@cs.utexas.edu (John William Garnett)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: floppy drives / old cubes
Message-ID: <1077@nada.cs.utexas.edu>
Date: 10 Feb 91 14:25:49 GMT
References: <1991Feb5.153658.24248@athena.mit.edu> <1991Feb06.034803.5577@ecst.csuchico.edu>
Organization: University of Texas at Austin
Lines: 35

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
[a few lines deleted]
>
>If NeXT would sell the damn faceplate from the new NeXTs (selling
>the new drive bay chassis wouldn't be bad either...), I would buy
>an internal floppy.  Unfortunately, this ain't so, thus I'm--as
>well as other older cube owners--SOL and can't go through this
>route.  So, I will, reluctantly, buy an external floppy
>drive...yuck, how unpleasing.
>

I agree with the above poster - having an external floppy drive
would be aesthetically unpleasing.  However, considering the
general trends regarding software distribution on opticals
and 2.88 floppy drives, floppiless cube owners will be left in
the cold if they do not purchase a floppy drive.

I too would like to purchase a new-style drive chassis and the
new-style faceplate for an old-style cube.  Is there any technical
reason why this is not feasible?  The benefits are obvious - four
half-height device mount-points instead of two full-height mount
points (which drops to one full-height mount-point if you have an
optical drive) and a way to install an _internal_ floppy.

Enough people have stated a desire for such an upgrade that I
believe an official NeXTian response (to comp.sys.next) is
warranted.
-- 
John Garnett
                              University of Texas at Austin
garnett@cs.utexas.edu         Department of Computer Science
                              Austin, Texas