I'm planning to not buy CDROMs for the bulk of machines, because they cost $68 each (varies with vendor, of course), and --Jimbo
$68 for a CDROM????? IDE (ATAPI) or SCSI? In Greece we pay 30 Euro for DVDROMs and less than 20 Euro for IDE (ATAPI) CDROMs. Second-hand CDROMs cost no more than 10 Euro (I recently sold a dozen of them at that price)
AFAIK Linux can be installed from FTP or NFS (I have never tried that). So even if you like to reinstall the OS, the CDROM is not absolutely needed if you have network connectivity and another server which will serve the Linux installation files.
If the machines can boot from a USB flash disk, you may consider it as an alternative to the floppy; although the floppy is superb when you don't have to use it very often.
with Best Wishes for Peace Profound, --Optim
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