[ On Tue, January 26, 1999 at 08:32:04 (-0500), Todd Vierling wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: major hier(7) overhauls?
>
> On Mon, 25 Jan 1999, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> 
> : I have lots more, lots older, hardware than most folks.  I've even got a
> : SPARCstation-1 running happily with a 105MB drive (sans compiler and a
> : few things like documentation, etc.),
> 
> Well, I have a 386 as a router with a *30MB* drive,
> and a SS2 with a 52MB drive,
> and an Amiga 3000 with one 52MB and one 80MB drive,
> and soon a DECstation 5000/25 with a 60MB drive,
> and a Shark with a 40MB internal drive,
> all getting /usr/share and most /usr from my server with the only 1.2GB
> drive (on a Cyrix 5x86 system) I have here.  So the system could conceivably
> fit on some of the disks above, but you still have to subtract swap....
> 
> So I can't see how damn well you can claim to be retrocomputing with that
> 105MB drive.  I don't shell out equipment cash if I can avoid it; almost all
> of the above was nearly free to free.

And my 38MB slower-than-ethernet drive doesn't count?!?!?!?

Note that even the 105MB drive does not constitute a "complete" system.
I had to strip off the compiler and /usr/share, etc.

If you want to scrimp and scrounge then you have to be prepared to
"customize".

> You just shot down a perfectly useable setup--one almost *identical* to that
> which a friend of mine has--and then claim to know what `perfect examples'
> of small systems are?

I don't think so.  It's just a matter of what's practical given what
you've got.

> `Stop making claims you can't back up and come back when you have a little
> more credibility.'

I don't think you understand what I'm talking about.  You're living in
your little box defined by the system you've got and the requirements
you percieve.  I'm showing how it's possible to break out of that box,
even while meeting your limitations.

Besides, I think one of the things I blue-sky'ed about in conjunction
with this thread was a properly working union filesystem so that the
workstation could have only a minimum of necessary files locally and the
rest would appear transparently through a union mount of a network
filesystem, just as Plan 9's bind scheme works.

Open your eyes!  Dream a little!  Think outside the box.

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098      VE3TCP      <gwoods@acm.org>      <robohack!woods>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>