jww@sdcsvax.UUCP (09/12/87)
In article <111STORKEL@RICE>, STORKEL@RICE.BITNET (Scott Storkel) writes: > In his posting about MPW, Joel West stated that MPW requires 1Mb and runs only > on a hard disk. This is NOT the case. True, MPW requires 1Mb RAM, but it CAN be > run from two 800k floppies. I will admit that this is far from the ideal > situation, and that to compile programs of any size a hard disk is a must, but > for the floppy-switch masochists the option is available. I doubt anybody is a bigger fan of MPW than I am, nor has a greater stake in its popularity. However, I must disagree with Scott's comments. I've tried running MPW from floppies. It can be done, but not very well. With MPW 2.0, you have to leave 80% of the stuff supplied offline. Also, I can't see spending several hundred dollars on MPW (unless, of course, you stole it) and then not spending the money to do it right. Technically speaking, you can get by without a hard disk, but the overwhelming majority of MPW users will want to buy one if they don't have one already. I bought my first hard disk after screwing around with a floppy-based MPW (1.0) for a few weeks. I would consider it misleading to say MPW doesn't require a hard disk--particularly for 2.0, where the draft manual notes "MPW 2.0 requires, at the minimum, a Macintosh Plus with one megabtye of RAM and a hard disk drive. The new Workshop will not run ... on systems without hard disks.") Moral: if you don't have enough money to buy a hard disk, save some more money and buy a smaller (cheaper) system, from someone like Think, Borland, TML, etc. -- Joel West (c/o UCSD) Palomar Software, Inc., P.O. Box 2635, Vista, CA 92083 {ucbvax,ihnp4}!sdcsvax!jww jww@sdcsvax.ucsd.edu or ihnp4!crash!palomar!joel joel@palomar.cts.com