[comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc] Free-floating diskette-device boxes on a network?

malc@equinox.unr.edu (Malcolm Carlock) (05/23/91)

Well, we already have free-floating, standalone printers which
can be attached directly to an ethernet or other network, with
no direct attachment to a host necessary.

Does anyone know if such a beast exists as a free-floating,
direct-networked diskette-drive box?  I could see this coming in
handy for people using X terminals or other non-DOS workstations
without a diskette-drive option, running DOS under a "soft-PC"
window.  Normally, such users would need to go to a machine with
a diskette drive attached in order to transfer DOS files to/from
the filesystem used by the soft-PC utility.

With a standalone network diskette drive, the box containing the
drive could just be sitting on the table next to the X terminal
(or whatever) with its own connection to the ethernet -- a "mount"
or "format" command from the machine where the soft-PC process was
actually running would attempt to attach to the floppy device over
the network using an appropriate protocol, with the possibility of
an NFS mount (or something similar) if the diskette contained a
valid filesystem.  If the drive were already in use, a "device busy"
message would come back, although I'd imagine that each such station
would have its "own" network diskette close at hand (each such device
would be a separate, independent TCP/IP node).

With the availability of HP's 700 series of 55-70 MIP workstations,
which offer a soft-PC with the performance of a 16 MHZ 386 machine,
setting up such a machine ($7900 educational cost -- 55 MIPs, X, and
the the multi-user functionality (and relatively robust security
features) of Unix for the cost of a high-end PC) as a "soft-PC" server
for a population of heterogeneous workstations becomes a real possibility.

The only real holdup is making diskette access easy for soft-PC users,
wherever they may be located and whatever type of workstation they're
using -- X terminals in particular.

Anyone know if such devices exist?

Thanks in advance.  Please respond via email and I will summarize to
the net.