croft@SU-SAFE.ARPA (Bill Croft) (02/27/86)
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 86 23:29:44 GMT From: Hugh Smith <hugh%computer-science.nottingham.ac.uk@cs.ucl.ac.uk> To: "Ralph W. Hyre,Jr." <Ralph.Hyre@c.cs.cmu.edu> Subject: Kinetics Sender: hugh%computer-science.nottingham.ac.uk@cs.ucl.ac.uk Now we have our Seagate working we would like to investigate the Kinetics board. Could I trouble you for their phone number - assuming they are not reachable by this route. Has anyone got rave reviews or otherwise for this product? ------- Hugh, I've had one here for a couple weeks and it seems to work fine: both efs (external file system) and MacIP operate as expected. There are two versions of code you can run inside the gateway: (1) Kinetics proprietary gateway code that uses just AppleTalk protocols. This is useful if you want to use an ethernet as a "backbone" for multiple AppleTalk nets. This version has no IP functionality. The other code you can run is: (2) a variant of the original Stanford seagate code. I've only been using this later one. Hopefully at some date in the future, these features might be merged into a single version. When we got our box, Tim McCreery brought over a tar tape of the modified seagate sources. I think they could just as easily provide this tar (or shar) image on a Sony disk too. When you have these sources, you can use your 4.2 VAX (or 68000 UNIX box) to cross compile the code, possibly making local modifications. The result of the cross-compile is an "S-record" file which you then transfer to a Mac disk. Then the Kinetics "prompt" (downloader) program is used to load the gateway from this S-record file. It all works pretty smoothly. I have heard from a recent customer that now Kinetics is also supplying a ready made S-record file of the seagate code. The new "prompt" program (which I havent seen yet) has a dialog box or configure file mechanism to let you set the IP gateway parameters. This is fine and may be enough for some users, but I think it is also wise to have access to the sources since custom modifications for that site may be necessary. For example, many IP nets have custom or non-standard routing table update protocols. If the Kinetics box (or any seagate) wants to advertise its AppleTalk net / subnet as being available to the other IP gateways, then a custom made packet must be broadcast on the ethernet periodically. The hooks are in the seagate code to do this, but it is NOT an item presently customizable from the dialog box of "prompt". When I talked with Tim a few weeks ago, he said then that the Kinetic-ized seagate source code would be provided to customers. I think this is still true; you might have to ask for it though. The Kinetics customer I talked to was also rather confused, since he knew very little about IP net numbers (class A,B,C), subnets, configuring MacIP, etc. I don't know what the answer is here; I guess if you intend to use the Kinetics as a seagate, you should get some help from your local IP wizards. Kinetics provides some documentation, but not enough: for example this customer didnt know that the ether and AppleTalk sides of the gateway needed different IP net numbers. He also did not know that the 4.2 UNIX /etc/route or routed programs need to be informed of the route to the AppleTalk net. Consequently he also had setup wrong numbers in the MacIP "configure" program/file. This brings up another point. I believe the gateway is working fine, because the efs code is having no problems. But some of the MacIP programs need further work. For example, the MacTelnet I am running does not respond to 4.2 TCP "keep-alives" (zero window probes?) Consequently your MacTelnet connection can die if it stays idle for more than a few minutes connected to a 4.2 host. Also MacTelnet has encountered other difficulties when used with desk accessories, and I have seen other types of disconnections. Since Tim Maroney (the CMU MacIP wizard) has now left CMU, I hope someone will pickup the package and work on these items. I havent used the TFTP on this version, but I imagine it is much more stabile than TELNET. This is because TELNET uses TCP, which is a recent addition to MacIP. Also there is this possibility: I have heard that at the "Maryland IBM/Mac IP networking" conference last year, Cornell announced that they had ported the current MIT IBM PC/IP code (in C) over to Mac Aztec C. This might be a good way to get the latest MIT version, with all the bug fixes, up quickly on the Mac. I want to praise the effort put in by Mark Sherman (Dartmouth) and Tim Maroney in porting the MIT code to Pascal and adapting it to the Mac; but it may also be fruitful investigating this C-based version that shares code with IBM land and may have more functionality and less bugs. For example: Tom Malloy here at Stanford put some effort into improving the IBM PC/IP code to allow multiple TCP connections so the FTP program can be run (instead of just TFTP). If the Mac version were in C, this could be ported easily. Also I have heard rumors that John Romkey, the PC/IP original author at MIT, is going commercial with an "new improved" version for the IBM. This same code running on the Mac could be a big win. File service: The EFS code runs with the Kinetics and I think several sites are playing with it. However I had hoped there would be more cooperative development and bug fixing on EFS. I rarely hear what improvements, if any, people have made. An obvious (and easy) extension would be to make it compatible with the new hierarchical file system (HFS). Another development in the file service area is well worth noting. Centrum Systems West, in Berkeley, is now beta testing their "TOPS" system. This is essentially a distributed file system for Macs and IBMs. Any machine on the net can "publish" their local volumes (hard disk, ramdisk, whatever) and make them read/writable by other machines. There are desk accessories to access other machines and volumes. Once mounted, the Mac/IBM treats the disk just as if it were local. The performance is quite good too. I've been over there for a demo and it's very impressive. One of their stock demos is to run Excel on the Mac reading a Lotus spreadsheet file on the IBM. The good news is that Centrum is now porting their code over to UNIX. In fact, that is Tim Maroney's new job. After it is finished, the UNIX server will access AppleTalk either through a Kinetics gateway box, or a Kinetics appletalk interface card in the UNIX box (e.g. Q-bus card for a microvax). I wish I had more time to play with this stuff myself, but the boss here doesnt think much of the Mac (for AI, I guess I can't blame him) and so any Mac hacking I do will have to be on weekends... Some contacts: Kinetics 3182 Old Tunnel Rd., Suite H Lafayette, CA 94549 415 947 0998 kinetics@su-aimvax.arpa diablo!kinetics unisoft!normac!tim@berkeley Centrum Systems West 2372 Ellsworth Ave. Berkeley, CA 94704 415 644 8244 (I think Centrum only OEM's their product, so unless you are a big customer, you had best wait until it shows up in some store.) --Bill Croft, Stanford Medical Center, croft@sumex