From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 1995 11:45:47 -0400
From: Martin Weitzel Martin.Weitzel@rent-a-guru.de
Subject: Help wanted, Plan9 a piece of junk!
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 190e7380-eac8-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025
Message-ID: <19950819154547.W4pvmzNfWtZqGvp_vBxRdgxKFuuxIO1jSB9rwwEMJ6E@z>

My $0.02:

If you just want to play a around with the free Plan 9 floppies, get
a fresh hard drive.  Plan 9 is demanding very little.  Considering
that several hundred MB cost no more than a few hundred bucks, many
people upgrade their hardware, so it should be easy to acquire an old
20 or 40 MB drive for nearly nothing.

If you have a serious interrest in Plan 9, especially if you want to
install the CD-ROM version with full source, you probably need a fresh
hard disk anyway.  Using a 1 GB drive with one half for Plan 9, the other
half for your "serious work" will cost about the same as two drives of
half the size.  I'd choose the latter alternative.

Years ago I equipped my PC with a unit called "Mobile Rack", which
allows me to pull out the HD and replace it with another in less than
a minute.  The part you fix in the PC costs about $15, the part you
need for each drive costs about the same, but IMHO it's worth the
price:  I have drives for my serious work, I have others to play with,
and I've never had any headaches if more experimental ventures like
installing an unknown OS could step on valuable data.

--Martin