carlitz@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Robert D. Carlitz) (02/14/90)
I have been working on putting together a telecommunications setup for a local elementary school. We are working with a classroom that has 15 or 20 Apple II's (ranging from II-e's to II-GS's) with a variety of floppy disks and a single Mac with a hard disk. What I would like to do is run a bulletin board on the Mac and let children log onto the bulletin board from the various Apple II's. Access to the outside world would be achieved via the bulletin board program. Is this feasible? Specifically, are there communications programs that can run on the Apple II and use Appletalk rather than a serial port? And, for that matter, are there bulletin board programs that accept logins from machines on Appletalk? Documentation of Appletalk for the II-GS's is so sketchy as to give no hint of what possibilities exist beyond simple print and file servers. Bob Carlitz carlitz@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Internet) pitt!unix.cis.pitt.edu (uucp)
jason@madnix.UUCP (Jason Blochowiak) (02/19/90)
carlitz@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Robert D. Carlitz) writes: >I have been working on putting together a telecommunications setup for a >local elementary school. We are working with a classroom that has 15 or >20 Apple II's (ranging from II-e's to II-GS's) with a variety of floppy >disks and a single Mac with a hard disk. What I would like to do is run >a bulletin board on the Mac and let children log onto the bulletin board >from the various Apple II's. Access to the outside world would be >achieved via the bulletin board program. Is this feasible? Of course it is! This is the Apple ][ we're talking about (well, there's only one Mac). > Specifically, >are there communications programs that can run on the Apple II and use >Appletalk rather than a serial port? Hmm, not that I know of. > And, for that matter, are there >bulletin board programs that accept logins from machines on Appletalk? Another one - not that I know of. There are, of course, mail programs for the Mac (if my gleanings from comp.protocols.appletalk have properly set in my mind, QuickMail seems to be folks' favorite), but that's a bit different than than a BBS. >Documentation of Appletalk for the II-GS's is so sketchy as to give no >hint of what possibilities exist beyond simple print and file servers. I dunno, I thought _Inside AppleTalk_ did a fairly decent job. There's some other documentation specifically for the //gs, but I can't recall the name at the moment. Anyways, although I'm not aware of anything like what you're looking for, it's certainly possible. But, because it doesn't exist, you'll either have to 1) Do without, 2) Wait for someone to write it (if anyone ever does) or 3) Go custom. #3 could be quite expensive, depending on who you hire. One other thing: As I understand it, //e's have to have a card stuck in them for AppleTalk access. Given that there ARE multi-port BBS'es for the Mac, you might want to consider buying serial cards & cables for the //'s (well, only cables for the //gs'es), and getting a multi-serial port card for the Mac. Unfortunately, I'm only aware of multi-port cards for the Mac ][, and those only have (a max of) 4 ports. With a Mac ][ (or ][x), you could get up to 20 ports (1 slot for the video card, 5 slots with 4 ports/slot). Depending on what sort of required access time you're talking about (will all 15-20 machines need to be used at once, or would only having a few students access the thing at a time be acceptable?), you could get away with a significantly cheaper solution (I think the Mac ][x with that many cards would be somewhere in the $8000, retail, price range). >Bob Carlitz carlitz@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Internet) > pitt!unix.cis.pitt.edu (uucp) p.s. I thought of sending this thing as mail, but decided that there could very well be folks who could comment on what I've said. -- Jason Blochowiak - jason@madnix.UUCP or, try: astroatc!nicmad!madnix!jason@spool.cs.wisc.edu "Education, like neurosis, begins at home." - Milton R. Saperstein
jason@madnix.UUCP (Jason Blochowiak) (02/19/90)
I forgot one relatively simple solution: Seeing as the fileserver
software already exists (and I presume it works), why not use it? So, instead
of using the Mac to run the BBS program, have each Apple // running some
software that deals with a set of files on the Mac's hard drive. Of course,
you'll have to deal with the problems normally associated with concurrency,
but I doubt that you'll need anything really high performance, so you could
take a fairly simple way out. Something like this could be written in
AppleSoft Basic by a fairly competent high-schooler, it'd be cheap (assuming
you already have the AppleTalk network set up, with the Mac running as a
file server), and it should provide an adequate solution.
Re-reading that 'graph, I see that it's not the clearest in terms of
the solution I'm suggesting. I can't figure out how to properly re-write it,
so here's another attempt: Each Apple // would be running the BBS program.
All of the files associated with the BBS would be held on the Mac, which would
be running as an AppleShare fileserver. Each copy of the BBS program would
act according to a strict set of rules regarding file access, so that integrity
could be maintained. Each copy of the BBS would be able to read the posts,
and allow the student logged in to post as well - the complexity and
sophistication would be up to you.
--
Jason Blochowiak - jason@madnix.UUCP
or, try: astroatc!nicmad!madnix!jason@spool.cs.wisc.edu
"Education, like neurosis, begins at home." - Milton R. Saperstein