John Dyson wrote:

> When I have worked on systems that use swap space conservatively, I have
> found that system developers and users are generally much more frustrated
> about the way that swap is allocated.  The lazy scheme used by FreeBSD
> and NetBSD is usually friendlier.  With disk space getting so cheap though,
> it might be time to reconsider.  (Oh, running out of swap space, just add
> another Barracuda, and dedicate it to swap.)

[Slightly veering off topic; forgive me]

In this vein, I got a kick out of - who was it?  Greg Woods? - posting about
problems with diskless client support, along with another post about
cash-strapped students running NetBSD and not having enough disk space to
keep all the src around, etc.

I was originally going to respond "Geez, a 1 Gb disk costs US ~ $100 now,
assign ``Diskless Client'' to the 80's, and surely a student can save up $100".

I'm going to rephrase that after going to an auction yesterday.  It was a
bankruptcy auction for a company that took Micropolis disks (they're located
next door to Micropolis) and churned out RAID arrays, etc.

In the fire sale I bought a used Seagate 4 Gb Barracuda (ST15150N) for $100.
(No typo.)

A brand new Seagate 23 Gb Elite went for ... $650.

A lot of 3 brand new Micropolis 9 Gb 3.5" Tomahawk 10,000 rpm drives went for
$225 apiece.

Another lot contained 7 prototype Micropolis 18.8 Gb 3.5" drives.  (The
planned successor to the 9 Gb Tomahawk that holds twice as much.)

It went for $50 a drive.  Fifty bucks for 18.8 Gb!!!

I love bankruptcy auctions  :)

	- Greg