Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!elroy!cit-vax!tybalt.caltech.edu!wetter
From: wetter@tybalt.caltech.edu (Pierce T. Wetter)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: What's the best NETWORK?
Message-ID: <6589@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Date: 18 May 88 21:11:16 GMT
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Sender: news@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu
Reply-To: wetter@tybalt.caltech.edu.UUCP (Pierce T. Wetter)
Organization: California Institute of Technology
Lines: 38

>>     Anyone who wants to run a macintosh as a diskless node is a moron.
>>
>>     Why? Every mac shipped comes with at least one floppy drive. Why not use
>> it if its there?
>> 
>>     Silly people.
>>
>A moron is a person who offers nitwit advice on subjects upon which they are
>completely ignorant.  Ever run a public workstation lab requiring maintenance
>and updating of hundreds of floppies across campus?  Then consider the possibi
    Yes. That's one of my jobs as mac consultant at CalTech. Guess I'm not 
    completely ignorant, but I knew that already.
>lity of all of those machines reaching out on bootup to grap a boot image
>from a single copy on a server, and you'll understand the point.  But you 
>morons are in good company:  the people at Apple (who definitely aren't
>morons) don't understand or care much about it either.
>-
   Except for the fact that no two people like their system setup exactly the
same way. The Mac World isn't nearly as boring as unix, but even unix allows 
you to choose your shell, and run your own .login file. Are you going to allow
these hypothetical people to run their own inits, desk accesories etc.?
  Regardless, you're missing the point. WHY DOES THE BOOTSTRAP HAVE TO BE IN 
ROM? You've got a floppy right there, boot off of it. If you're really concerned
about updating automatically to new versions, it would be trivial to have the
master take over the slave and update the slaves floppy automatically. The nice
thing to do would be to ask the person before you go ahead and do it (You have
an old version of the boot disk. Would you like it updated (Y/N)?)
  Besides, anything less then ethernet/ethertalk is too slow to do real work
and if you're going to shell out the bucks for for an ethertalk card, why not
shell out a bit more for a hard disk.

  I'm not surprised Apple doesn't consider putting diskless code in the Rom
a high priority, neither do I.
Pierce WEtter

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wetter@tybalt.caltech.edu     Race For Space Grand Prize Winner.
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   Useless Advice #986: Never sit on a Tack.