CCGREG%UMCVMB.BITNET@ohstvma.acs.ohio-state.edu (Greg Johnson) (06/11/91)
After Eric directly answered my request for advice about setting up a NeXT lab, I had some more questions for him. Here's his response. Again, thanks Eric! Tomorrow, in response to requests and to provoke further discussion about NeXT lab configurations, I intend to summarize how I've actually set up the lab to try to fulfill the purposes mandated for it at my institution. Gotta go now, the lab is about to be used for the first time, as a Mathematica classroom for Calculus II students! Date: Sun, 14 Apr 91 19:17:46 PDT From: eps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) To: CCGREG@umcvmb.missouri.edu Subject: Re: Networking NeXTs in a student lab environment > Have you had any >particularly good or bad experiences with simm vendors? I've been >watching the list that's occasionally updated to comp.sys.next. And you missed the soap opera? Shame on you. In a nutshell: most of the experiences have been good; the one exception was with 4MBx8 _horizontally-mounted_ SIMMs from Chip Merchant. They exchanged them promptly at no charge for vertically-mounted SIMMs that did work. Their 4MBx9 (parity) horizontal SIMMs didn't have any problems, BTW--just the non-parity ones were bad. Our preferred suppliers are Chip Merchant and Technology Works, and we've heard good things about Peripheral Outlet. They all advertise in the back of MacWEEK if you need their addresses/phone numbers. Note that you can play these guys off against one another; we got Technology Works to drop their quotation after telling them what Chip Merchant was selling for. >No, what had been considered was encouraging users to at least do their >own backups to their own NeXT diskettes Ick. Even to 2.88s (which cost $6 each, when 1.44s are more like $.80 each) that's a painful thought. When you have machines that free people from the limitations of "toy" computers, and let them work with images and digital audio, it's no longer "how many files can I fit on a disk" but "how many disks do I need for a single file." NeXT regularly demonstrates digital audio quality with 40 MEGAbyte sound files. Not that I expect most users to get into that sort of thing, but the NeXT *can* do that without wheezing. On the other extreme, the people who run our large IBM mainframes just snicker at us. "No, that 22 GIGAbytes doesn't include any data. That's *just* the operating system." > or to tape cartridges. Which is reasonable *if* you spring for Exabytes--the drives cost many times what, say, QIC-24 drives would, but students are more likely to go for $5 cartridges that hold 2.3GB than $30 cartridges that only hold 150MB! (The worst choice here appears to be 4mm DAT... not only is it expensive, it's unreliable.) >You seem to have enough resources to keep your users happy, at least for >now. Or am I wrong? There are *never* enough resources. I think we'd do much better if we'd stop pouring money down the PC rathole, but it always ends up something like: "Why are we even bothering with PCs? Wouldn't we be better off providing users with the best possible machines for the things people use computers for?" "Well, when students graduate, what they're most likely to find in the `real world' is PCs." "So, what you're saying is, we're really here to provide vocational training." "Well, that's part of what we do." > If you ever, for your own curiosity gather some >statistics on your users (disk usage profiles, printer usage, network >traffic, type of usage, etc...) I'd quite appreciate a copy. Hmm... some of that we can generate, a lot of it just isn't monitored. We have an exceedingly socialist arrangement here; all students, faculty and staff are entitled to essentially unlimited free use of all computer resources (everything from PCs to mainframes... but we rent typewriters by the hour, strangely enough). Most of the statistics are summary statistics; it's easier to determine how much paper, ribbons, toner cartridges are purchased than what "usage" is. Network traffic is *not* useful to monitor, since there's *no* cost associated with usage; that's like asking us to measure toilet flushes. Our campus is wired with 62.5 micron multimode fiber, most of which isn't even connected. If we need more network bandwidth, we'll just plug in a couple hundred more megabits. "No problem." -=EPS=-