Re: SETI like tass project

[Chris Albertson <chrisalbertson90278@yahoo.com>]

Peter,

The removable disk idea is good.  I did some work a while
back for Raytheon in Texas.  They had a system fielded in
the UK (a coincidence) with about 100 computers in a
couple large rooms.
They kept the software up to date with disk swaps.  They'd
ship over a crate of removable drives and the customer
would return ship the old ones to be recycled.  It worked well
the those military users never had to learn how to install
the software.  They kept spare drives on hand so if someone
messed up a PC they'd simply swap in a good drive. In bulk,
Raytheon payed only $15.00 for the drive carriers.

The system worked well but CD-ROMS are even cheaper and could
do the same job.  I think we could make a CD that
could be either booted and run stand alone or installed onto
an HD at the user's option.  We could also keep a "dot ISO"
image on an FTP site for those with fast links and CD burniers

Packaging is key.  Not everyone knows how to unpack a tgz file
and build from source.  The package should assume just a bare PC
but also contain the .tgz file for those who can use it. or
those wanting to run on an Alpha or SPARC.


--- Peter T Mount <peter@retep.org.uk> wrote:
> At 15:27 29/01/2002 -0800, Chris Albertson wrote:
> 
> >--- Gamble family <dgamble1@bigpond.net.au> wrote:
> ><SNIP>
> > > I have an old PC I could resurrect if CPU speed is not critical,
> > > however
> > > like Tom I am not particularly keen on learning LINUX from
> scratch.
> > > Would it
> > > be possible to distribute an installation CD that would set up
> the
> > > operating
> > > system and all the necessary software for the pipeline?
> >
> >Yes that could be done.  It could boot off the CD and run
> >linux on a RAM disk without installation but I like my
> >"black box" idea better.
> 
> Chris, I agree with you. Two jobs ago, I ended up building several
> "Black 
> Boxes" to act as routers.
> 
> In that case they were literally a motherboard, a cheap graphics card
> (most 
> BIOS's won't run without one), 2 network cards and a floppy drive.
> The 
> entire OS was on one floppy. They are still working fine 2 years on.
> 
> Also, why not have the disks in removable carriers? That way, any
> update to 
> the software can be done remotely, and also means that the data once
> on 
> disk can be sent easily by snail mail.
> 
> Peter
> 
> >PCs with no CRTs are dirt cheep to build from surplus parts.
> >Not having a CRT, keyboard or any way to interact with a human
> >the feature/complexity creep problem is kept at bay as the end
> >user sees zero and therefor has an upper limit of zero to learn.
> 
> 
> 


=====
Chris Albertson 
  Home:   310-376-1029  chrisalbertson90278@yahoo.com
  Cell:   310-990-7550
  Office: 310-336-5189  Christopher.J.Albertson@aero.org

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