GigaRouter (Was Re: Cisco as Big Brother))

Sat Oct 19 17:25:57 UTC 1996

> Jim Dixon writes:
> > > Gated IMO is a good thing.  The problem is the OS/hardware that it
> > > runs on top of.  I would dred having to install something that needs
> > > a hard drive to route packets in a light-out POP.  
> > 
> > You don't need a hard drive.  Use some of the money you saved by not
> > buying C***o to buy lots of DRAM.  Boot from floppy.
> > 
> > Or even buy a flash-based hard drive emulator.  Or combine the two 
> > solutions.
> 
> I've been thinking about this. A while ago I saw a product that emulated
> dual 1.4MB floppies in flash on an ISA card. This seemed like a good way
> to start. Has anyone actually tried this? What flash product did you use?
> 
> /a
> 
> ---
> Alexis Rosen   Owner/Sysadmin,
> PANIX Public Access Unix & Internet, NYC.
> alexis at panix.com
> 

I've been thinking about doing this for a while now.  The only product
that I've found so far is made by a company called MCSI ((619)
598-2177) , but the only thing I've been able to get out of them so
far is that the darn thing emulates a DOS filesystem through the bios,
though they referred me to another company that does the firmware for
their card, and claimed that this company could do custom firmware for
me.  I think MCSI has a card that emulates a dual floppy as well.

I'd love a card that just provided a single raw drive emulations, even
IDE would be fine, so I could just copy a whole bootable file sytem
image into it, but I guess 2 floppy images would suffice.

The card that emulated an 8mb DOS filesystem was only around $300.

Rob