hopp@thor.stolaf.edu (Eric D. Hopp) (02/10/89)
This is a plea for information and leads on TCP/IP on the Amiga. This is also trying to (I hope) stir up some interest in some neat possibilities... This is my situation: I am a student at St. Olaf college, helping the Art department set up a computer graphics system, using Amigas and Macs. I found the KA9Q stuff, and it really fired my imagination of what could be done with TCP/IP on the Amiga. Imagine the following scenario: One Amiga with lots of serial ports, connected to our campus vaxes, various serial printers, and a cheap appletalk - like serial network with lots of Amigas on it. This Amiga, call it "Picaso", would always be available as our gateway, mail server, printer server, and possibly file server. Users of other Amigas could log into the vaxes with a net-based terminal emulator, print files on *any* printer the server knows about, with automatic queueing, send mail, ftp, or telnet anywhere, and generally do neat things. This would be even more fun if an appletalk bridge existed somewhere. We could use the Laserwriter II from the Amigas, and they could use the HP Paintjet. The pieces are potentially here. Use appletalk-like hardware to connect serial ports running at top speed. (I believe this is basicly what the hardware level of appletalk consists of, along with a protocal chip.) A prt: like device could be written that implements the TCP/IP protocals for the port of your choice -- ser:, par:, SCSI, ethernet, etc. You could use KA9Q or some of the recently released Berkely code to get a head start. Application programs would then deal with our net: device. There is the Columbia Appletalk Package, which allows UNIX to be on an appletalk network. This could be ported or used as is. Mail would be fairly easy. Outgoing messages could be held in ram until they could be sent to the mail server. (Picaso) He would accept any incoming mail, and potentially add password protection to the mailfiles. Local mail is easy, everything else gets passed to the vaxes. Printing might be interesting. Users would use a generic net client printer driver. Print jobs would be sent to the server, which would line them up with the proper printer driver / printer combination. Queueing could be rather sophisticated. Also, if the server knew how to send stuff to the Laserwriter on the Appletalk network, or the Imagen connected to the Vaxes, those printers would also be available. Are these possibilities making anyone else drool? The Amiga should certainly be capable of all this! Now, back to my plea for information. Does anyone know where the source for a *working* Amiga version of KA9Q is? I hear this stuff is fairly modular. (cool!) Does anyone know of, or have experience with, readily available software that would help to fulfil the ideas I've expressed? How much does Ameristar offer, besides an ethernet card? ***************************************************************************** I've offered this as a plea for information, but I'd really like to have it be taken as the beginning of some exciting ideas of things the Amiga is certainly capable of. Can you imagine what computing will be like if wb 1.4 includes a TCP/IP device that can use *any* port, along with user-level software to take advantage of it, and an option for *cheap* networking hardware? Wow! Think of it. You could use your modem as a medium for a SLIP like to your favorite UNIX host. You could ftp from your Amiga, an telnet the UNIX host at the same time! We could have printer servers, file servers, mail servers, ........ (Calm down, Eric!) :-) Anyway, please mail information to me, or, if appropriate, post it. If I get smothered in mail, I'll be sure to post a summary. Eric Hopp or just..... hopp@stolaf.edu St. Olaf College Northfield, MN 55057 Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are mine, all mine, and none but mine.
Classic_-_Concepts@cup.portal.com (03/05/89)
Eric Hopp, in the meantime, until you realize all the ideas you have for the lan and servers, etc., it's not too difficult to interface your computers with the Laserwriter II through the two serial settings (1200 or 9600), thus not needing the Appletalk. We do this in an office with 2 Macs, several PCs and a Sun and sometimes my Amiga when I bring it in. -LH