andrew@gatech.CSNET (Andrew Ditchfield) (04/14/86)
Has anyone had experience with networking or using a network of PC's. Our
office wants to share data, and devices more easily.
How difficult is it to do and how well do different configurations work?
Thanks,
Andrew Ditchfield
--
Andrew Ditchfield
School of Information & Computer Science, Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA 30332
CSNet: andrew @ GATech ARPA: andrew%GATech.CSNet @ CSNet-Relay.ARPA
uucp: ...!{akgua,allegra,hplabs,ihnp4,linus,seismo,ulysses}!gatech!andrewmadd@bucsb.UUCP (madd (Madd(ly) lost in the Net....)) (04/16/86)
In message <3340@gatech.CSNET> andrew@gatech.CSNET (Andrew Ditchfield) writes: >Has anyone had experience with networking or using a network of PC's. Our >office wants to share data, and devices more easily. > >How difficult is it to do and how well do different configurations work? While I have had limited experience with PC networks (ie linking actual PC's together) I have had experience with resource sharing in PC's. I company called ALLOY markets a PC "card" which plugs inside you PC [XT/AT] and gives you a second PC. I ran one for over a month (not long, you say? I hacked on it and ran everything I could get hold of) and had almost no compatibility problems. The one problem I had was with BASICA (yep, the original IBM version). They provide a program that corrects this. (It seems the the BASIC code is nearly all in the PC's ROM, or at least that's what I have heard). I ran the following system: * PC AT * 20 MB disk * 1.2MB floppy * 360K floppy * PC Slave cards (that's the thing) * 4 Kimtron PC-7 terminals The terminals are your workstation. The software they provide allows the PC to be a file server. The only time this was noticable by the person operating the PC is when one or more of the terminals was doing INTENSIVE access to the hard disk, or when using the floppies. The software is very intelligent. It allows print spooling to up to 7 printers (I only tested it using 1 at a time, but talks to their tech people said yes, it works great with even 7). There is a pop-up menu which is used to control the actual printing of things from the terminals, as well as inter-system messages, commands, and other things. It is very easy to use and quite reliable. The terminals we used (Kimtron) look much like the PC AT's. The key layout is the same, and the feel is the same as in a VT220 terminal. I actually prefer this to the AT's keyboard. As for behavior, they emulated the PC completely, less graphics (graphics characters are supported, just not pure graphics). Also, no color. As for software, we ran about everything. Lotus/Symphony, a lot of memory resident programs (public domain, some VERY IBM-specific), DisplayWrite 3 (this is IBM's own -- more later), assorted tax packages (there were four, I think), several programs I hacked out to test this-and-that, and Knowledgeman (database). Also Smartcom II. Of these (and some others, I forget some of them) I only had problems with DisplayWrite 3. It reacted quite slowly, possibly because IBM did a lot of deliberate calls to make it very specific to their machines. Everything else that didn't have graphics worked great. One other problem presented itself -- key repeating seemed to cause trans- mission errors. This may have been due to real inexpensive cabling (un- shielded). It was seldom a problem, but did present itself a few times. As for disk management, it automatically allocates all users the same amount of memory on the hard disk, unless specified differently by the host computer (the PC). It gets restructured at boot-up (ie the memory may go up or down for each user, but it evens out again when you reboot). It can handle up to 2 fixed (permanent) disks, and supports a disk-cache system that did affect the performance considerably. Card data: The thing runs at 8 MHz, and has an 8087 coprocessor if you want it. It is expandable to 640 KBytes. It ran appreciably faster than the AT that it was connected to, including video. It can use a variety of common terminals, selected by the host. Overall, I was VERY impressed. We had a few ups-and-downs, but it always helps to read the documentation (as of a month ago, it had great document- ation). Compatibility problems: Only one. Don't run it with a PC-Network card in it. We tried and it kept locking up on us. Taking the card out fixed it. Also, the documentation says that some video cards have problems, and also describes how to fix it. The technical staff of ALLOY knows what they are doing, and is very helpful. They listen to questions (I asked them some HARD ones) and do their best to answer them. I highly recommend this if you are thinking of setting up a network, but have yet to do so. It is also quite inexpensive (just over $1000 per workstation when we were doing it, not including PC) and is expandable. You can use up to 99 cards, I think, though this would likely be pushing things a bit. Four was no problem at all, giving five available work- stations (yes, PC is still usable). Only one other thing presented itself. The software used to serve the cards takes up almost 200K (including a respectable disk cache). This means a 512K machine is all but a necessity, and you want 640K to be really usable. I was told by the tech people that you can interface a RAM disk as another shared drive, which to me would mean FANTASTIC speeds (I assume it would have to be set up before booting the whole network up). Data is protected by corruption through the use of file or record locking techniques. They conform to the standards set up for the PC Network. An auotomatic record-locking technique allows non-network programs to operate in complete safety. If you are interested, mail me any questions. I would be happy to tell of my experiences and help in any way I can. As I said, I was very im- pressed (I had expected to be disappointed, as in the PC Network stuff). -- +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ : Jim Frost : "You just gotta smile through it" : : : "The Earth is just too small and fragile : : ..!harvard!bu-cs!bucsb!madd : a basket for mankind to keep all of its : : cscc71c%bostonu.bitnet@wiscvm : eggs in."--Robert A. Heinlein : : USnail: 75 Washington St : "What the hell, put 'em all in one : : Laconia, NH 03246 : basket"--Me : +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
lau@ubc-ean.UUCP (Eric Lau) (04/21/86)
Networking PC's together is not very hard, the problem is finding
a networking system that suits your needs. Most of my experience have been
with PCNet and EtherNet (Both with Novell). Novell is an operating shell
that provides multilevel security of files on the server. And allows a
PC to have a hard drive with more than 32 Megs. It also helps throughput
of the whole network by having multiple caches, and elevator seeking on the
hard drive. It also handles spooling of serial and parallel printers.
Gateways are also available for Network to Network communications.
If you tell me more of what you want, maybe I can help you find a
suitable LAN.