Xref: utzoo comp.arch:6595 alt.next:116
Path: utzoo!hoptoad!pacbell!ames!husc6!bu-cs!encore!bzs@xenna
From: bzs@xenna (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.next
Subject: Re: The NeXT Problem
Summary: Maybe people on the list have it all wrong?
Keywords: truth, justice, the american way
Message-ID: <3884@encore.UUCP>
Date: 16 Oct 88 02:51:34 GMT
References: <26435@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <5498@juniper.uucp>
Sender: news@encore.UUCP
Reply-To: bzs@xenna (Barry Shein)
Followup-To: comp.arch
Organization: Encore Computer Corp
Lines: 72
In-reply-to: chari@juniper.uucp (Christopher Michael Whatley)

It does seem obvious that the main advantage of the removeable optical
disk in the University environment is with University purchased
clusters of machines.

A student comes in with his/her disk, sits down at a machine (any
machine on campus), plugs it in and boots. Other software etc can be
gotten from NFS file servers which would mount on boot. Doesn't really
matter which NFS server, any one on the local net will do (a little
PARC-like clearinghouse software to broadcast for an appropriate
server would take care of that "will the NeXT binaries server please
mount itself on my /usr/local partition!")

So, you can work near your next (NeXT?) class, then go over to the
library and work some more etc.

Not sure how mail would work in that scheme although post-office
protocols should suffice (contact your mail server machine and fork a
background job to suck over all your new mail as you get started,
doesn't have to be awfully fast, going thru gateways would be fine,
unlike NFS where it would be something to be avoided, the local server
could figure out where your mail is for you easily enough.)

Thus, the optical disk needs only the basic operating system (even a
lot of the utilities could be mounted read-only via NFS, no need to
have things like emacs on the local disk etc.) With swap I'll guess
you'll use around 100MB or a little less for overhead. That leaves
around 150MB for user space, not too bad, especially when compared
with your average student's disk quota on a time-sharer (what? A very
few MB usually.)

The economics are that it shifts the cost of disk space to the
student. At a University with 5,000 student users at $50/disk I come
up with (scritch scritch) $250,000 in costs now shifted to the
students (well, that's a funny number, per-semester? per-year?
per-matriculation? also students are getting a lot more disk, but
about $50 is probably what their current few MB is worth right now.)

Assuming more read/write storage can then be had on the NFS systems,
even temporarily, then things can be shuffled about by copying off a
removeable disk, putting in a fresh one and rebooting and copying it
all back. Pretty gross, but a student's time is pretty cheap (ie.
you're also shifting that work to the student.)

Given all that backups become stranger, unless there's some way to get
one's disk backed up while on-line as a service by the University
(doubtful.) Optical disks aren't horribly fragile, but they can get
destroyed (eg. sat on in a back pocket, dropped in a bookbag) or lost.
I suppose one could grab two machines off-hours and do a disk copy, at
worst.

Setting up lockers for students to store disks in might be a good idea
(living in Boston makes me wonder how these disks respond to large
temperature changes, having lived in other places makes me wonder how
much they like beach sand.)

The laser printer is even stranger, perhaps it was an afterthought.
What you really want in that environment is a scheme to send printout
to a high-speed printer which is shared (perhaps one located in the
university copy-center where a cost accounting system is set up to pay
as you go, there might be small satellites set up near each workroom.)

Conclusion: In it's current configuration it seems to not be a
"student" machine per se but a Computing Center machine, something
designed for their model of providing computing (rooms full of
machines, let the students buy and manage all the disk space, no need
for [much] operations etc.)

Not too dumb, quite possibly very clever, not sure where it leaves a
certain trend towards owning the machine, working from a dorm room
etc. If that were the interest it would have an ISDN connector.

	-Barry Shein, ||Encore||