Xref: utzoo comp.arch:6640 alt.next:146 Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!mende From: mende@athos.rutgers.edu (Bob Mende Pie) Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.next Subject: Re: The NeXT Problem Message-ID: Date: 17 Oct 88 04:51:56 GMT References: <26435@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <5498@juniper.uucp> <1988Oct16.022032.29382@utzoo.uucp> <5549@juniper.uucp> Organization: Yows `R' us Lines: 32 In article <5549@juniper.uucp> chari@juniper.uucp (Christopher Michael Whatley) writes about the subject of getting updates via modem. > Ok, it's not such a ridiculous idea. However, your average student (me), > does not want to call up uunet and sit ther for an hour watching the > retry count go up long distance. If the university could have the > software available by modem that would be great. You could go into the > computer store at school pay your money and get a special password and > login-name. That wouldn't be too hard to manage I suppose. There are a couple of things that may make this useful... We must remember that NeXT plans to make a university responsible for distribution and I will assume to some extent maintence/support of NeXT machines. The $50 cost of a optical disk is *not* unreasonable if you only have to send out one disk to a university. The university could allow people to get the updated software via modem or by use of a two drive machine. While I think that the optical disk is good, NeXT *SHOULD* adopt a standard format for both 3.5" floppys and 5.25" floppys. I would think the MS-DOS format for floppys, no flames, is a standard (a number of them) that would allow file transfer to those who only have a IBMish machine. I can imagine a box that hangs off your SCSI port, that has a 5.25" 1.44Meg floppy on it as well as plugs to hang more floppys off of. This way vendors could offer their software on 1.44 meg floppys as well as optical disks. /Bob... -- {...}!rutgers!mende mende@aramis.rutgers.edu mende@zodiac.bitnet Hi there! This is just a note from me, to you, to tell you, the person reading this note, that since my operation I have not had a strange thought, well except the one about the MAMBA is a BLUE SUIT.