Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!apple!bionet!agate!pasteur!ames!zodiac!deimos!jshelton
From: jshelton@deimos.ads.com (John L. Shelton)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: NeXT's BIG 3.5" mistake.
Summary: How about r/o disks?
Message-ID: <5902@zodiac.UUCP>
Date: 26 Oct 88 02:39:55 GMT
References: <4192@pitt.UUCP> <12670004@eecs.nwu.edu> <4003@encore.UUCP>
Sender: news@zodiac.UUCP
Reply-To: jshelton@ads.com (John L. Shelton)
Organization: Advanced Decision Systems, Mt. View, CA (415) 960-7300
Lines: 15

Seems like it might be possible to use something like a CD-ROM in the
NeXT optical disk drive; it could be pressed in a plant by the 1000s
for $2.00 each (like any other CD-ROM), and used for software
distribution, since the user doesn't really need to write onto a
distribution disk.  $2.00 each is pretty close to cost of distribution
via floppy.

I know the formatting/track-density/all-sorts-of-other-parameters
probably aren't the same as for CD-ROM, but still should be possible
with minor re-tooling.

Wouldn't want to see what happens when the NeXT drive tries to write
on a read-only disk.

=John=