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From: bob@allosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield)
Newsgroups: alt.next,comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Questions on NeXT machine
Keywords: NeXT
Message-ID: <24816@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 17 Oct 88 18:44:04 GMT
References: <17780@glacier.STANFORD.EDU>
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In article <17780@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> jbn@glacier.STANFORD.EDU (John B. Nagle) writes:
> - Interchange/backup media.  Apparently the magneto-optical drive is
>	removable, but only one is provided.  Does this mean that one
>	is supposed to make backups by swapping two disks back and
>	forth, perhaps 40 or 50 times?  Or is a second drive
>	essentially mandatory?  How much does a second drive cost?  Is
>	one available?

Remember that this is being sold into a University environment, not
the home market.  Right now, because they can't make enough to satisfy
all the demand, it's only being shipped to selected departments in
selected institutions that can really make it shine (not an
unreasonable strategy!).

All such departments are already fairly well along in the workstation
world, and have NFS server capacity already in place.  Those servers
also have tape drives (1/2" or 8mm or whatever) in use as mass backup
devices.  Local NeXT disks can be backed up with standard BSD rdump to
some central tape drive.

The optical drive is intended to be used similarly to the way students
use floppies right now: carry your work into a public lab and start
working on any machine.

Alternatively, one could set up a NeXT-only cluster, with one machine
configured with lots of big fast disks on the E-SCSI port.  Then the
optical drive could be a backup medium for the central server files.

Similarly for a standalone machine: I wouldn't want to run Mach from
the optical drive, though it could be done.  If a machine must run
remotely from a server environment (like in my study at home - I only
wish! :-), it should be configured with a conventional Winchester disk
as its primary mass storage, and the optical drive used for software
installation, backups, and media portability.
-=-
Zippy sez,								--Bob
Look into my eyes and try to forget that you have a Macy's charge card!