chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (11/09/88)
A few weeks ago, I asked for comments on the Shiva Netserial. Responses were generally positive, so I finally went out and got one. The price was $289 (plus $3 overnight shipping) from MacConnection (note: the price has been lowered since the ads they've placed in macworld -- I was thrilled to hear they didn't want as much as I wanted to pay!). Installation was clean and simple, taking less than 10 minutes for hardware and about 5 for software per machine. It came up first time, and has worked wonderfully. You basically can't tell that it's there, either from CompuSesrve Navigator or Red Ryder. I did some test downloads at both 1200 and 2400 baud under typical loads, and the speed difference during downloading was less than 1%. Can't complain there. I have noticed one glitch. Every so often, I either get an occasional key dropped or my system goes into key-repeat mode when it shouldn't. This seems related to other traffic on Appletalk AND the fact that I'm (1) a very fast typist and (2) have key-repeat and key-delay set to their fasted values. And I see it very occasionally on top of all of that, so I don't even rate it an inconveniences. One thing to be aware of: NetSerial does NOT come with cables. So you may need a modem cable, and you probably will need an Appletalk connection. Those ran me $20 and $50, respectively. Keep those in mind in your budgets, unless you know you have them around. Other than that, NetSerial has met my expectations and has done everything I've asked it to. Being able to use the modem from either of my machines is really a nice thing -- we on't need to argue about who gets which computer now, so we aren't interrupting work as often to switch around. Chuq Von Rospach Editor/Publisher, OtherRealms chuq@sun.COM It's not justice you want, Roderick! It's blood!
jb@aries5.uucp (James Bruyn) (12/09/89)
Could you please provide me with a review of your experiences with the Shiva NetSerial. Thanks in advance Jim Bruyn UUCP: jb@aries5 BITNET: jb@watcsg AppleLink D0365
chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (12/09/89)
jb@aries5.uucp (James Bruyn) writes: >Could you please provide me with a review of your experiences with the >Shiva NetSerial. I've been using one at home for about 18 months. It's currently attached to a US Robotics 9600 baud modem and lets us use it from any of the Macintoshii on the net (yeah, a LAN in a house. why not?). Previously, I'd tried to use InfoServe, a software-only solution, which gave me no end of grief. I finally tossed it out. The Netserial has been flawless, being used essentially daily. I've considered putting the MIDI on one so it could be used from any of the machines as well, but I'm lazy. It's *almost* transparent. Under Red Ryder and White Knight, the only 'problem' is that these programs open the serial port when they start and keep it open (which is what you'd expect them to do, when you think about it). Unfortunately, if the NetSerial is busy when you try to grab it, RR won't necessarily open the port right. The solution is to exit the app and start it again -- no biggie. Under CompuServe Navigator, if the modem is busy Nav will time out and end the session rather than waiting for the port to come back to life. None of this, notice, is Netserial's problem -- just programs making (reasonable) assumptions about the serial port that don't happen to be true. You can use both the Netserial *and* the serial port it emulates simply by using the CDEV to turn Netserial on and off. I like my Netserial. It's really been a good purchase for my uses. -- Chuq Von Rospach <+> chuq@apple.com <+> [This is myself speaking] When it comes to matters ourside your specialties, you are consistently and brilliantly stupid [....] with respect to matters you haven't studied and have had no experience basing your opinions on casual gossip [....] and plain misinformation -- unsuspected because you haven't attempted to verify it. -- Robert Heinlein to J.W. Campbell, Jr. 1941
dbrown@apple.com (David Brown) (12/09/89)
Our experiences with NetSerial & NetModem have been pretty good on the whole - it means that we didn't have to buy modems & install 2nd phone lines for everyone in the company (we use them for dial-outs from the office). We have had a couple of problems: 1) We're connected to a very large Appletalk network (~90 zones). When we connected our own little network (5 networks, one zone) to the main net, we could no longer see (in the Chooser) the Shiva equipment across Apple routers. Shiva was quick about sending a PROM fix for the NetSerial, but it took several months and many phone calls before we received (this week!) a PROM fix for the NetModem. Meanwhile, our users on EtherTalk & TokenTalk had to use either the one NetSerial device, or switch their network connection to LocalTalk (where they could access the NetModem on their local LocalTalk segment only - we had to install NetModems on each LocalTalk segment). 2) The Shiva management program also has problems with our huge net (and/or Apple routers). When we start it up, it sits forever (or at least 30 minutes) displaying the message about searching for bridges. We have to remove the Shiva equipment from the net & create a tiny net with just a Mac & the Shiva device in order to modify configurations. Other than that (and most users won't have these problems), we've been very happy. The recent software (v3.1 and above - the latest version we have is v3.3) has a nice feature that lets you select multiple devices by holding down the shift, and it will find the first available device when you access it (creating a pool of modems). David Brown Orion Network Systems 1995 University Ave. Suite 350 Berkeley, CA 94704
drew@cup.portal.com (Andrew E Wade) (12/10/89)
(My mailer couldn't reach poster, so...) We've had a netserial with attached external 2400b modem for about a year, on net with half-dozen or so macs. For dial-out: just fine, works, we're happy. For dial-in net access: what a neat idea, sometimes works, but flakey. Sometimes can't get it to work 2400b, and it drops to 1200b, but sw doesn' t recognize that, so you have to manually reset. Some things don't work well or time out, presumably because it's slow. And, finally, although the concept is great (dial up and you're connected just as if you were on the net locally), in practice it is 100x slower (2400b rather than appletalk 240Kb), so many (most?) things become impractically slow; e.g., a print job that might take 30 sec normally, becomes 5 min, which is too slow for me, anyway. Speculation: we've had some crashes that might (caveat: I'm speculating...) be related to shiva software, maybe the mods done to the system on init or the init itself. I say might be related because mysterious crashes stopped when we removed shiva software (rebuilt a new system without it). NOw, it is unfair to blame shiva, because I don't really know. Guess I'm curious, though, if others have seen this or not. -Drew