🚀 go-pugleaf

in article <5692@super.upenn.edu>, hodas@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Josh Hodas) says:
 
> OK, I'm helping my wife write a proposal to get her work group macs
> running hypercard to use a stack environment she has developed that
> would help there work performance by orders of magnitude.
> 
> Now, We are looking to keep hardware costs down so we are interested
> in options regarding using tops so only one system needs a hard drive.
> 
> Can everything be done from the server? Each worker will have his/her
> own copy of the stack so multi/user is not an issue (except for one
> stack which is ok if it's read-only).  So, can we boot from locqal floppies
> and then use hypercard and stacks off the net?

Haven't noticed a response along these lines, so here goes...

Though you've said each user will have a copy of the stack, here's a problem
that occurs if all the users are accessing stacks off the same hard drive.

Hypercard does updates on stacks during its spare time. Since a CD-ROM can't
be written to, Apple updated Hypercard so that you can tell it that you are
using a CD-ROM, and it won't try to update the stack. You can then save the
stack later when you are finished with it. We'll get back to this.

Let's say you use Hypercard and access a stack off the hard disk via TOPS.
As always Hypercard will update the stack as you make changes. This will
create a lot of AppleTalk traffic, a lot of hard disk access, and generally
slow down everyone's work.

What's this got to do with CD-ROMs? Well, if you tell Hypercard that you
are using a CD-ROM, and are really using a hard disk across TOPS, it shouldn't
know the difference. Now the updates won't occur, eliminating all that
excess data across AppleTalk, and a lot of hard disk access. You just have
to remember to save the stack when you're done with it.

I just thought of this problem, and I'm not sure if this solution will work,
though I can't think of any reason why it shouldn't. Hope this helps.

Joe		uucp:  joseph@cooper.cooper.edu