Text 34308, 47 rader
Skriven 2007-07-02 11:02:55 av Alan Zisman (1:123/789.0)
  Kommentar till text 34306 av Shawn Highfield (1:229/452.1)
Ärende: iCare.
==============
On Mon, 02 Jul 2007 10:10:14 -1193, Shawn Highfield -> Alan Zisman wrote:

 SH> On 2007-07-01 22:46:32 -0400, "Alan Zisman -> JEAN PARROT"
 SH> <azisman@nospam.zisman.ca> said:

 >> I know a Vancouver elementary school that purchased a lab full of
 >> 1987-model Mac Pluses, networked them, and had them running full
 >> time until 2005 when they were finally retired.

 SH>   There's a local pizza chain here (7 stores I think) that are still
 SH> running those Mac + things (Monitor built in) they are all networked to
 SH> the owners house where the main "Server" runs.
 SH> I once got called in to one of the stores to solve a networking issue
 SH> for them.  (Was a telephone cable thankfully because I wouldn't have
 SH> known where to start with those old apple's.) ;)  The new ones no
 SH> problem though. :)

The easy networking of those old Macs was a big selling point
in the late 1980s.... using standard phone cables connecting
to a little adapter that plugged into one of the serial ports;
it was easy to daisy chain a bunch together-- the only trick
was that terminators were needed on the ends of the chain.

(And that it was easy for the adapters to fall (or be pulled)
out of the serial ports)... I helped network one school's
computer lab that way in order to share a laser printer, and
still have a box full of the adapters and phone cords.

The networking software was built into the OS, something was
certainly not true of DOS or Windows at the time.

The school with the lab full of Mac Pluses liked using that
model- without hard drives; the OS was on a floppy diskette...
they had one Mac SE with a hard drive (20 MB?) as the 'server'

When there was a problem with a system, it was easy to replace
it with another-- just connect the network cable adapter to
the back, plug in the floppy disk, and it was up and running
on the network... an early example of thin client computing.

After 15 years of non-stop operation, power supplies were
starting to fail-- they would go up in a puff of smoke. But
lots of people had Mac Pluses sitting unused in their closets,
so the school tended to always end up with spares at no cost.

--- Pan/0.14.2 (This is not a psychotic episode. It's a cleansing moment of cla
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