wen-king@cit-vlsi.Caltech.Edu (Wen-King Su) (10/16/88)
In article <452@oracle.UUCP> csimmons@oracle.UUCP (Charles Simmons) writes: >In article <26435@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> pchris@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (Chris Perleberg) writes: < >>4) Slow Optical Drive: In the past, optical drives have been significantly <> slower (seek times) than magnetic drives. What is the advantage of the >> optical drive? Cost must be less than that of the larger 330Mbyte $2K <> magnetic drive. But NeXT will be hurt once benchmarks come out for its >> i/o performance (using the optical drive). < >Something to factor into your price performance picture: I believe another <article pointed out that the optical drive was under $1500 dollars. So, >for $1550, I get 256MB of disk storage. For $1600 I get 512MB of disk <storage. For $1700 I get 1 Gigabyte of disk storage. Admittedly, my >seek time gets a little bit long (2 to 3 seconds) when I have to swap disks... < >For the 330 MB winchester, I'm fairly certain that you can't pop the <disk in and out of the machine. To get massive amounts of storage, >you'ld have to attach a tape drive or floppy disk drive. 256 MB of <floppy disk storage, in volume, should cost you around $250. For >the tape drive, your seek time is probably somewhat worse than 2 to 3 <seconds. I am curious about how one might remove the disk containing the root partition and the swap space without killing UNIX. I believe NeXT will need another disk for the root partition if you want to swap the optical disk. The way I see it, and as a previous poster has pointed out, the greatest advantage of NeXT is that each user gets to own his/her own 256M file system that can be removed and mounted on the dorm wall when not in use. It is also perfect for people who has to commute between two work places. I know a professor who uses a Sun here during week days, a PC at home during weekends, and he often has to dial in and copy files using Kermit. For him NeXT would be perfect. He can get one for his office and one for his home and take all of his work from one place to the next on a single optical disk. Right now he has only about 30 Meg of data crammed into a set of file systems that is busting at its seams. If Sun counters NeXT by quickly introducing its own removable optical disks and comparable systems, however, I think Sun will be successful in maintaining its dominance in schools. /*------------------------------------------------------------------------*\ | Wen-King Su wen-king@vlsi.caltech.edu Caltech Corp of Cosmic Engineers | \*------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
jbs@fenchurch.MIT.EDU (Jeff Siegal) (10/17/88)
In article <8326@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> wen-king@cit-vlsi.UUCP (Wen-King Su) writes: >I am curious about how one might remove the disk containing the root >partition and the swap space without killing UNIX. I believe NeXT >will need another disk for the root partition if you want to swap the >optical disk. Remember, it is _not_ running UNIX. It is running Mach, which is UNIX-compatible. I don't know for sure that Mach lets you remove the root partition, but I do know that it doesn't have swap space (it swaps to free space on an ordinary filesystem). The point, of course, is don't make assumptions based on experience with older systems. If this machine wasn't new in a significant way, no one would be making such a big deal about it. Jeff Siegal