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Aucbvax.1907 fa.works utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!mike@RAND-UNIX Wed Jun 24 06:09:33 1981 Re: Apollo Network You say that the 'apollo software is another story'.

Well, OK, what's the story?

When I was visiting Apollo, it was clear that the hardware was close to working and that they had no idea just how hard the software they were planning was going to be to write. Either they didnt know or they were trying to tell me a story.

Specifically, they intended to write a truly network distributed file system: with paging, swapping and file transfers all completely independant of the local machine which might or might not have a disk drive. When I asked them what file names would look like, to get an idea of whether the file name would contain the name of the root file system (location) or whether the location would be 'hidden' from the user: they had no idea. They had never even thought of the question.

It is possible that there was someone in the building who knew something about software, but I didnt have the opportunity to meet them.

I was also not overwhelmed with their desire to build a non-standard network. But their attitude seemed to be: this is what Prime is doing and we are really from Prime so this is what we are doing.

Update ??

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