From: raz@sleeper.apana.org.au (Roland Turner) Subject: Re: Intel, the Pentium and Linux Date: Sun, 25 Apr 1993 03:00:45 GMT
jcburt@gatsibm.larc.nasa.gov () writes:
>In article <C5Izr4.61q@sleeper.apana.org.au> raz@sleeper.apana.org.au (Roland Turner) writes:
>>Hmm? I see no problem with it. I run a PC store and, yes, if someone
>>strolled in and said "can I boot this" on one of my demo machines I'd have
>>no problem with it. If it rewrote my partition table, so what - chuck in
>>the setup disk and cable into the file server - burn 10 mins to rebuild
>>the demo...
>Problem is when you're doing a demo on the road (which is what the fellow with
>the pentium was doing), THERE IS NO FILE SERVER!!! which means rebuilding
>your disk from floppy...you trash the disk on a road demo machine and it
>will probably take a couple of hours to set things up again and just get the
>system running, not to mention the time needed to "tune" the system and get the
>demos running the way they are supposed to. Unless the guy doing the demo had
>a complete backup machine, I don't blame him at all for being unwilling to
>boot the linux disk...
I should have pointed this out earlier: My filesever is a notebook 486. This
has on board:
Complete copies of all of my demos (ie I insert a boot floppy into
the errant machine, fdisk and format if neccessary then use xcopy.)
Complete copies of various versions of novell Netware. This is why
the server is a notebook in the first place - it enables me to
work on Netware servers on site at far greater speed than would be
possible without a spare fileserver.
It runs as a lantastic Z server, meaning that it boots DOS and can
be used to do its own reconfiguration. It is also easier to rebuild
from its own bacup than an equivalent Netware server. ANY pc with
a serial port can become its client merely by booting from either
of my "field" boot disks.
If I were globetrotting with an unstable machine - I'd DEFINITELY carry the
ability to rebuild the demo at zero minutes notice!
--
Bye for now.
- Raz. (Roland Turner)
raz@sleeper.apana.org.au VK2ZRT Raz@3:712/413.1 (OH) 61 2 319 5700