Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pasteur!eris!korn
From: korn@eris (Peter "Arrgh" Korn)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: What's the best NETWORK?
Message-ID: <3262@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu>
Date: 11 May 88 00:30:53 GMT
References: <1814@uhccux.UUCP> <1815@uhccux.UUCP> <781@sleazy.UUCP> <1075@aucs.UUCP>
Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu
Reply-To: korn@eris.UUCP (Peter "Arrgh" Korn)
Organization: What, me organized???
Lines: 24

In <1075@aucs.UUCP>, paul@aucs.UUCP (Paul Steele) said:  
>>My Mac is running diskless, ie my system resides on one of the Sun servers.
>>...
>I am curious about the diskless Mac workstation.  Does TOPS allow a Mac to
>boot without any inserted disks? I was under the impression that that was
>not possible with a networked device, that there had to be some sort of
>local hard disk to boot from before a mac can access the Appletalk network.
>...

It is certainly possible to *run* a Mac with out a local disk.  It is 
impossible to *boot* a Mac without a local disk, or without custom hardware that
has been added into a Mac to allow it to do so.  You need to start out
with a System file.  You also need to have a System file that you are
using all the time you are running MacOS.  You can, if you want, switch
System files in the middle, which is what was done with Tops in the
doubly quoted comment above.

The local disk that you boot from, however, needn't be a hard disk.
A floppy works just fine.

Peter
--
Peter "Arrgh" Korn
korn@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU
{decvax,dual,hplabs,sdcsvax,ulysses}!ucbvax!korn