Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!oliveb!amiga!cbmvax!ditto
From: ditto@cbmvax.UUCP (Michael "Ford" Ditto)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: AM(iga un)IX
Summary: Networking: yes and no
Message-ID: <6330@cbmvax.UUCP>
Date: 18 Mar 89 21:28:21 GMT
References: <72@snll-arpagw.UUCP>
Reply-To: ditto@cbmvax.UUCP (Michael "Ford" Ditto)
Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA
Lines: 29

In article <72@snll-arpagw.UUCP> paolucci@snll-arpagw.UUCP (Sam Paolucci) writes:
>1) When AMIX will be available, would an ethernet card be included or
>   available from Commodore at possibly additional cost, or is the Amiga
>   supposed to operate only as an island?

The machine won't come with an Ethernet card, although the OS has support for
various forms of networking, including AT&T TLI & RFS.  There are third-party
networking cards that will work when drivers are written for them, and there
will be support for those third parties to write drivers if we haven't
already done it.  We are investigating various TCP/IP software packages, and
hope to have full TCP/IP support in the first Amix release.

>2) If such a board will be available, will it be possible to boot the
>   Amiga via the network and use it as a diskless node (of course making use
>   of NFS)?

Not in the first release, but probably someday.  Actually that's three
separate questions, (boot-via-ethernet, diskless node, and NFS support), each
of which is being investigated, and any of which might appear at first
without the others.  For example, running without disks we theoretically
already have with RFS, it's just that you have to be running Unix before you
can mount any remote file systems.
-- 
					-=] Ford [=-

"The number of Unix installations	(In Real Life:  Mike Ditto)
has grown to 10, with more expected."	ford@kenobi.commodore.com
- The Unix Programmer's Manual,		...!sdcsvax!crash!kenobi!ford
  2nd Edition, June, 1972.		ditto@cbmvax.commodore.com