bytebug@dhw68k.cts.com (Roger L. Long) (09/20/89)
Would anyone care to enlighten me as to the ins and outs of Macintosh
networking? I work in a small company where there are two Mac IIs and
a Mac Plus being used. We'd like to hook them together to increase
their usefulness. We're starting pretty much from scratch; the only
other equipment that will probably come in handy are two Nuvotech
TurboNet boxes (that we used to hook one of the Mac IIs to a visiting
LaserWriter awhile ago).
Our needs are:
a) NO SERVERS - We're not rich (yet), and we'd all like to continue
using the machines that we have. This rules out AppleShare, I
guess...
b) share files - Two of us develop software, and often work on the
same project. Right now, we both maintain copies of the sources
on both machines, with one of us integrating his changes into the
master source. This is a pain, and my being able to change files
on the other machine would be quite helpful.
c) messaging - Something like Broadcast would probably do. Real email
would be even better.
d) sharing printer(s) - See (a). We're not rich (yet), and all we have
here now is a couple of Imagewriters. Is there an alternative to
upgrading one or both to be Appletalk Imagewriters? (Would such a
solution require enough of the CPU that we'd want to upgrade the
Imagewriters so that the person printing would be talking directly
to the printer.)
e) hook up other machines - Eventually we'd might like to hook up an
IBM clone to this network. Not a big consideration... We also have
an old Alpha Micro machine with a bunch of disk space that we could
use for archival storage, if hooking up were not too much a problem.
So, the question of the day - what hardware and software do we need?
By eliminating AppleShare because of (a) above, it looks to me like that
leaves Tops and something called "Personal Server Network" from Information
Presentation Technologies, Inc. Can anyone give me the pros and cons of
choosing one over the other? I'm tending to lean towards PSN because I've
heard that they adhere to AFP, where Tops has it's own protocol.
And that leaves me to solve (c), (d), and (e) with other hardware/software.
Any suggestions for email for a small set of machines? Network print
spoolers?
Thanks for any help you can offer.
--
Roger L. Long
bytebug@dhw68k.cts.comvita@daredevil.crd.ge.com (Mark F. Vita) (09/21/89)
In article <26558@dhw68k.cts.com> bytebug@dhw68k.cts.com (Roger L. Long) writes: >By eliminating AppleShare because of (a) above, it looks to me like that >leaves Tops and something called "Personal Server Network" from Information >Presentation Technologies, Inc. Can anyone give me the pros and cons of >choosing one over the other? I'm tending to lean towards PSN because I've >heard that they adhere to AFP, where Tops has it's own protocol. Pro's of PSN: * It does indeed adhere to AFP, which among other things means that you will only need to purchase software for the Macs that want to serve files (clients use standard AppleShare client software). * It's cheaper (lists for $145 for a two-node license, compared to $249 for a single-node TOPS license). * No brain-damaged serial-number copy protection scheme. * Consumes less memory than TOPS. Cons of PSN: * Installation is somewhat more complex than TOPS. Actually, installing the software itself is not really more complicated (just drag a few files over); it's running the administration program to establish user ID's, groups, file permissions, etc. Of course, this is really due to the nature of AppleShare itself. On the upside, you get a much richer system of file security than you do with TOPS, and all the permissions are visually integrated into the Finder. If you're in a hurry, you could always do a "quickie" installation where you just set up one user ID, and make all files available to that user ID (which is basically analogous to what you get when you publish a TOPS volume). One other significant difference to note between PSN and TOPS. With PSN, like AppleShare, the basic publishable entity is a volume. With TOPS, it's a folder. With TOPS, if I have some folder on my disk that I would like to make available, I can publish just that folder, and the rest of the disk is not visible (i.e., a user mounting that entry would see the folder contents as the top level). With PSN, you can only publish on a volume by volume basis. A user mounting your disk "sees" the entire volume. But of course, what the user can actually see or change is strictly controlled by whatever files permissions you have assigned. The bottom line is that you can get the same behavior as described above with TOPS, but it requires a bit more thought. * Mac Pluses are currently not supported as servers. This is because of the lack of certain ROM code in the Plus. I called IPT's tech support and found that it is possible to get around this by installing the "AppleTalk" system file and increasing the size of the system heap. IPT doesn't officially support this, however, and they don't recommend it for 1-meg machines. They said that do plan on supporting the Plus in a future release. My personal recommendation would be to give PSN a shot; overall it has a lot of advantages over TOPS, and the drawbacks are relatively minor. >And that leaves me to solve (c), (d), and (e) with other hardware/software. As for e), I believe that both IPT and TOPS have versions for IBM PCs/clones. ---- Mark Vita vita@crd.ge.com General Electric CRD ..!uunet!crd.ge.com!vita Schenectady, NY
steve@violet.berkeley.edu (Steve Goldfield) (09/21/89)
In article <26558@dhw68k.cts.com> bytebug@dhw68k.cts.com (Roger L. Long) writes:
#>Would anyone care to enlighten me as to the ins and outs of Macintosh
#>networking? I work in a small company where there are two Mac IIs and
#>Our needs are:
#> a) NO SERVERS - We're not rich (yet), and we'd all like to continue
#> using the machines that we have. This rules out AppleShare, I
#> guess...
You could also consider Novell with which you could use a cheap
PC clone as the server. I think you'd also need an Ethernet board
(rumor has it that Novell will have one for about $300 which is
better (faster) than already existing ones. Actually, I guess you
could use a PC as server with TOPS, too, since any machine in the
network can be a server (but you don't need a server, you say).
#> d) sharing printer(s) - See (a). We're not rich (yet), and all we have
#> here now is a couple of Imagewriters. Is there an alternative to
#> upgrading one or both to be Appletalk Imagewriters? (Would such a
#> solution require enough of the CPU that we'd want to upgrade the
#> Imagewriters so that the person printing would be talking directly
#> to the printer.)
If you want the printer on the network, it needs an Appletalk
board. But if you have two printers and two Macs, why not leave
them dedicated?
#> e) hook up other machines - Eventually we'd might like to hook up an
#>
#>So, the question of the day - what hardware and software do we need?
#>
#>By eliminating AppleShare because of (a) above, it looks to me like that
#>leaves Tops and something called "Personal Server Network" from Information
#>Presentation Technologies, Inc. Can anyone give me the pros and cons of
#>choosing one over the other? I'm tending to lean towards PSN because I've
#>heard that they adhere to AFP, where Tops has it's own protocol.
#>
#>And that leaves me to solve (c), (d), and (e) with other hardware/software.
#>Any suggestions for email for a small set of machines? Network print
#>spoolers?
I'm not familiar with PSN; we've got TOPS and Novell in our
office (though our Macs aren't hooked up to Novell because
we networked first). Both TOPS and Novell deal with c, d, and e.
TOPS comes with a spooler and can connect Macs, PCs, and Unix
machines (I'm about to get a connection to a VAX for a server
and backup purposes). The main difference between the two is
speed because Novell uses Ethernet. Until recently, the speed
difference was reported to be small. But our tech who installed
Novell tells me the new board will be significantly faster. You
don't really need a network print spooler. On our network, one
user has SuperLaserSpool (single user), two are using TOPS
spool, and I use Multifinder to print in the background. Such
an arrangement works fine unless you want to be able to control
the queue of the entire network rather than queues from each
user. In summary, without knowing about PSN, TOPS is the
cheapest, but Novell is fastest. (I'm pretty sure Novell does
require a server, though.)
Steve Goldfield
College of Engineering
UC BerkeleyJames.Zuchelli@f555.n161.z1.FIDONET.ORG (James Zuchelli) (09/25/89)
I believe there is a product called MacServe that uses one of the mac's as a server and will allow you to use an imagewriter if it is upgraded to an appleshare imagewriter. I think MacServe sells for under $200.00 and is supposed to be pretyy good. -- ------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNet: 1:161/445 UUCP: sun!apple!bmug!<User.Name> INTERNET: bmug!<User.Name>@apple.COM or <User.Name>@bmug.fidonet.org USNAIL: BMUG, 1442A Walnut St. #62, Berkeley, CA 94709-1496 ------------------------------------------------------------- BMUG ARPANET ADDRESSES: Newsletter submissions: pub@bmug.fidonet.org Membership or business: biz@bmug.fidonet.org Information: info@bmug.fidonet.org Help Line Questions: help@bmug.fidonet.org