Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!chinet!les
From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Setting up a software "checkout" system
Message-ID: <7426@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 11 Jan 89 04:56:19 GMT
References: <518@blake.acs.washington.edu>
Reply-To: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 20

In article <518@blake.acs.washington.edu> djo7613@blake.acs.washington.edu (Dick O'Connor) writes:
>One of our work units has 11 similarly-configured XT and AT machines.
>There are a few pieces of software that (for budgetary and usage reasons)
>I would like to set up in a "check-out" library for users to borrow when
>the need arises. 
...
>Two suggestions that came out of a little brainstorming were to purchase
>Bernoulli drives for each machine (storing the software on Bernoulli 
>cartridges) and to purchase an external tape drive unit that could
>double as a backup device as well as a portable software source.
>I'm researching the costs of these ideas now.

This sounds like more money than it would take to network all the machines
and provide a central server.  Many networks (I've only worked with
AT&T's starlan) will provide "exclusive-access" directories where only
a single client can link to it at one time.  Most software will work
under these conditions even if it is not set up for network operation,
since it doesn't have to deal with sharing files.

Les Mikesell