Path: utzoo!hoptoad!amdcad!apple!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!natinst!bigtex!james
From: james@bigtex.cactus.org (James Van Artsdalen)
Newsgroups: alt.next
Subject: Re: The NeXT Problem
Message-ID: <9353@bigtex.cactus.org>
Date: 16 Oct 88 20:22:32 GMT
References: <26435@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <7774@gryphon.CTS.COM> <9287@bigtex.cactus.org> <3311@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Reply-To: james@bigtex.cactus.org (James Van Artsdalen)
Distribution: na
Organization: F.B.N. Software, Austin TX
Lines: 25

In <3311@pt.cs.cmu.edu>, ns@cat.cmu.edu (Nicholas Spies) wrote:

> In article <9287@bigtex.cactus.org> I wrote:
| [...] lighter.  Optics are apparently still very much more massive and could
| well remain so indefinitely.

> It's not too difficult to imagine that the optics of a WORM drive
> read/write head could be reduced to a slender optical fiber leading to
> a stationary laser.  [...]

Well, at this point we need to find a drive designer to clear this up.
But I assume a fiber optic strand would be heavier than a conducting
metal wire.  Indeed, I wonder if the laser is a diode on the head
instead of a fiber stretching the length of the arm.

I should point out that I think the removable optical R/W drive is a
very good idea.  I don't see it being used much as the primary disk
drive.  I suspect is the machine is intended for networked
environments, and that you are expected to use NFS quite a bit.  Most
students will easily fit all of their files into 256Mbytes.  Machines
that aren't networked presumably will have a large SCSI drive
attached.
-- 
James R. Van Artsdalen      james@bigtex.cactus.org      "Live Free or Die"
Home: 512-346-2444 Work: 338-8789       9505 Arboretum Blvd Austin TX 78759