Comment by scbrg

Well, TRAMP was preceded by ange-ftp, which let you edit files remotely over ftp. I was using that in 1995, and I didn't get the impression then that it was brand new, so it had probably been around for a while already.

Of course, if your problem is "/usr won't mount", then it's likely that the ftp server isn't running either, so the advice still makes sense.