[Oberon] USB, bloat, LNO, SCSI/IDE

[easlab at absamail.co.za]

 A number of related topics:

It would be good if the work on USB for BB/Aos could be done so
that it could easily be ported to native-oberon.  Perhaps also with
some convenient test-points/hooks ?

The several post against creeping bloat; also in our Wirthian systems
was welcome. Yes we must fight bloat !   But related to the kernel,
as I understand: if the extra booting capabilities are not required,
they need not be linked into the kernel, which will consequently
be smaller.

Q -  are any machines with a BIOS which can boot from a USB-stick,
  sold yet ?

I've previously noted that having LNO available at the same time 
as N-O on the same machine, could be great; to use the superior 
text handling facilities of N-O with all the other linux facilities which 
N-O lacks, like *.ps, *.dpf viewers, a good threaded news reader ..etc.

To this end I've been trying to 'recover' my previously working 
LNO versions.  My results further confirm the arguments against 
creeping bloat, and that 'things get worse instead of better' !

Of my 4 versions of linux, the oldest Slakware is by far the best and
fastest for LNO. Newer RedHat6.2 finally manged to be restored, and
yet  newer Mandrake9 doesn't work, and the 'newest' of the 4: FC1; is 
the slowest, and I don't want to waste time trying to get it running 
LNO.   I think most of the 'getting worse as time progresses' is caused
by the influence of the art-school graduates ?

Q-  since the advantage of Compact Flash to IDE interface lacks 
   the ability to hot-plug, as a replacement for increasingly
  unreliable floppies, and [as I understand] SCSI is hot-plugable,
  do standard PC mother-boards have a SCSI connection ?
 

Thanks for any info,

== Chris Glur.