Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bbn!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!ius3.ius.cs.cmu.edu!ralphw
From: ralphw@ius3.ius.cs.cmu.edu (Ralph Hyre)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: diskless NeXT? (was Re: Announcement vs reality)
Keywords: Next
Message-ID: <3638@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: 21 Nov 88 23:16:56 GMT
References: <17846@glacier.STANFORD.EDU>
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 27

I saw one the other day.  The use that silly new IBM/new DEC/ISO stupid
keyboard format, with the ESC key in the wrong place.  (I was told it can
be remapped, but so what?)

Is anyone thinking (or asked NeXT) about buying a totally diskless machine?
It might be useful for public clusters of machines where you don't want
to let the user control the state of the machine by booting up a special
copy of the operating system (maybe this will only be a problem at CMU).

The extant Mach installations around here (on Suns, for example) don't yet
completely support diskless servering/booting, but there must be SOME way
to do it.  Probably boot prom mods at least are required.

After all, if you can NFS it, you can keep the stuff normally on the
optifloppy on a fast hard disk, and the ethernet interface should be capable
of ~8Mbps peak (assuming Van Jacobsen's header-prediction TCP stuff will port)

So it should be as good a diskless machine as a diskless Sun.  And it gives
the NeXT more of a 'product family' feel, since you can get a variety of disk
types (none, magnetic, opto-magnetic) and (eventually) CPU types (1-4 
processors).   And, I can almost afford a $5K diskless machine, then buy 
whatever the best disk technology is before I leave the University.
-- 
					- Ralph W. Hyre, Jr.
Internet: ralphw@ius3.cs.cmu.edu    Phone:(412) CMU-BUGS
Amateur Packet Radio: N3FGW@W2XO, or c/o W3VC, CMU Radio Club, Pittsburgh, PA
"You can do what you want with my computer, but leave me alone!8-)"
--