[steve1977]

But the Sun (and NeXT) workstations were not just mostly X terminals, that’s the point I’m trying to make. They were workstations, pretty much the opposite of a thin client.

[icedchai]

Ok. I view "thin" as shades of gray: example a diskless, net-booting Sun is "thinner" than a full blown workstation. Those foundational technologies (like NFS, NIS, X...) made it easier for Sun to build and promote full blown thin clients later on.

To my knowledge, NeXT never supported a diskless config. (Or did they?? Did anyone work with that?)

[detourdog]

Pretty sure diskless was an option for NeXT. Everything was configured in NetInfo where I think a remember a boot file location setting.

[dragonwriter]

The NeXTcube and NeXTstation did not come in diskless configs.

Diskless may have been an option when NeXT software was detached from NeXT hardware, though.

[detourdog]

I understand that couldn't be purchased without a disk but I kind of remembering booting cubes and slabs from a network file. This was probably 5 years after dropping hardware.

[icedchai]

I did find mention of it in the docs! Perhaps it was supported, they just never shipped systems in that configuration.

[detourdog]

It’s also part of the directions for running multiple motherboards in a single cube.

https://wiki.preterhuman.net/NeXTcube_running_68030_and_6804...

[steve1977]

Ok I see your point. Thin for me is basically dependent on where the actual (bulk of) computation happens.