In the old, old days.....  there were boot tapes galore..... 
Now, only a few old things like my VAXtoyz and Sun3toyz still make a lot
of use of them.

In the old days..... there were boot floppies and floppy sets..... 
Now, floppy drives are becoming less and less common, except on certain
machines like an x86 box, or my old sparc boxes, or my alpha boxes.

In the modern era..... most commercial systems are using cd media,
and we seem to be doing more and more of that.

In the future(?)..... everything will be on cd except for a few old
legacy things (like my legacy things...TK50 and DC600 forever!).....

Begin propeller-headed beanie mode.....

What about, for the sake of discussion, extending the functionality of
the usual cdhdtape images we now have, to include what I call a minimal
install (for example, having base/etc/kern files present)?  That would
allow the heavy user (not the usual one machine person that should buy
the full release distribution set, but the folks like me that follow
along the various snapshots and builds and releases for certain machines
and features only), to have a simple bootable system disk for generic
use.

In the old days, I kept tapes and floppy sets around with just the
minimal install bits on them, so a standalone machine could be brought
up quickly and easily.  Yeah, I know, netbooting is everyone's fancy,
but, if you are working on a new machine out in the shop, or on the
kitchen table, or wherever, netbooting may not be the best option.

Currently, I keep either a local ftp machine up on the home net, or
a portable laptop ftp machine handy and try to use those.  But,
the idea of only having to lug around a cdrom and cable to do
a minimal test install, would have its advantages, too.  A lot
of folks have cd burners, and the blanks are getting cheaper and
cheaper.  A bootable single-architecture minimal-install iso
would be a handy thing to have around.

Is there any interest in having such iso images around (at about
50mb per architecture), across all the different architectures,
or am I the only fellow that thinks that it is a good idea?

If it is a good idea, it needs to be coordinated somewhere up
the chain of command, so things don't get scatterbrained in
12 directions at once.

End propeller-headed-beanie mode....

Thanks

Bob