Have any of you with "machine farm collections" set up any sort of file-system-server to manage disk images, "serve" disk images, or direct-boot across your collections? For example, see this moribund thread: http://www.pdp11.co.uk/blog/2008/11/17/building-reliably-modern-storage/ ----- Building reliable modern storage For many years I?ve been pondering the problem of how to provide a reliable long term storage solution for my PDP-11 and PDP-8 machines. Whilst I have plenty of period drives which are still operational it is apparent that in the long term it is unlikely to be possible to keep them all running. It also a sad fact that many more CPUs are being saved from the scrapheap than drives leading to a lot of collectors having a CPU unit but no storage to boot them from. I?m therefore kicking off a pet project to build a versatile solution using modern hardware to provide a long term storage solution for our machines. The key objectives of this project will be as follows: - Provide a reliable solution that as far as possible is not tied to any technology that is likely to become obsolete in the next 10 years - Ease of installation and operation. - Provide adequate storage capacity for all of the common PDP-11 operating systems - Make as much use as possible of pre-existing efforts to crack this problem My initial plan is to develop this solution in two phases: 1. Would involve a server running SIMH, a TU58 emulator, vtserver and an RX01/02 emulator. The server would operate under Linux operating system (Centos4) and would have a web based interface for managing the various components. Installation would be via a yum based repository allowing users to install and update the setup on their system from a simple set of commands. 2. Much more ambitious, but where I think we should ultimately reach will be to develop custom Unibus/Qbus/Omnibus controller cards for interfacing directly to the bus. This will allow us to provide a solution with a good level of performance without any requirements for pre-existing controllers (such as RX11s). -----