eho@cognito.Princeton.EDU (Eric Ho) (08/25/89)
Does anyone out there know of any Unix-based printer sharing software that allows me to print Mac files on my Sun LaserWriter ? -- i.e. I want my Sun LaserWriter remain attached to the back of my Sun-4 (running SunOS 4.0.1), that is I still want my Sun to control all the spooling to the LaserWriter. I've Transcript 2.1 running on my Sun and I would like this package to work with rather than replacing Transcript (there're many others in the group who depend heavily on Transcript for their day-to-day work so I can't lose Transcript). Obviously I need to get some sort of ethernet card (probably from Kinetics ?) since I'm just talking about 1 Mac here (no point to spend all that money to get an AppleTalk<->Ethernet gateway) but I don't want to spend the money until I'm sure that the needed software exists at a reasonable price. I think that the file-transfer software should be pretty straightforward and the price should be quite reasonable (if public domain versions don't exist yet for the Mac ether card). My worry is with printer sharing software. The only one that I heard of is K-Spool from Kinetics that runs as a daemon on the Suns (with some kernel modifications I heard ?) but the price is kind of ridiculous -- it is more expensive than the ether card itself. It cost something like $600~$700 when I can get an ethernet card for the Mac-2 for under $500 ! The only public-domain software I heard of that provides both Unix-based printer sharing and file-transfer is the KIP & CAP packages from Stanford & Columbia respectively but my impression is that they only work on the Kinetics FastPath and I don't think that my need is justified to buy an expensive gateway box for just 1 Mac. I'm interested if anyone knows of any alternative. -- Eric Ho Cognitive Science Lab., Princeton University voice = 609-987-2819 (x2987) email = eho@confidence.princeton.edu eho@bogey.princeton.edu regards. -eric-
quent@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu (Quent Johnson) (08/29/89)
eho@cognito.Princeton.EDU (Eric Ho) writes: >Does anyone out there know of any Unix-based printer sharing software that >allows me to print Mac files on my Sun LaserWriter ? -- i.e. I want my Sun >LaserWriter remain attached to the back of my Sun-4 (running SunOS 4.0.1), >that is I still want my Sun to control all the spooling to the LaserWriter. >I've Transcript 2.1 running on my Sun and I would like this package to work >with rather than replacing Transcript (there're many others in the group who >depend heavily on Transcript for their day-to-day work so I can't lose >Transcript). I have exactly the same problem! I've got a MacII with a kinetics Etherport card. The Columbia stuff sounds good except I don't have a Fastpath (and don't need it with the Etherport card). NCSA Telnet/Ftp works for many things. It would be nice to print directly from an application rather than print postscript to a file and ftp it to the print spooler machine. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= =- Quentin Johnson ISU Computer Science Department =- -= Internet: quent@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu -= =- UUCP: {uunet!umix!sharkey, hplabs!hp-lsd}!atanasoff!quent =- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
mlevy@uvicctr.UVic.ca.UUCP (Michael Levy) (08/30/89)
quent@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu (Quent Johnson) writes: >eho@cognito.Princeton.EDU (Eric Ho) writes: >>Does anyone out there know of any Unix-based printer sharing software that >>allows me to print Mac files on my Sun LaserWriter ? -- i.e. I want my Sun >>LaserWriter remain attached to the back of my Sun-4 (running SunOS 4.0.1), >>that is I still want my Sun to control all the spooling to the LaserWriter. .... We are now doing this, using software called "uShare" from IPT, phone (818) 347-7791. uShare makes our Sun 3 (OS 4.1) look like an appleshare server. It also lets us use printers that are on the Sun. To any Macs on the Mac end, the sun printers look like ordinary Mac printers, except that they are in a different zone. We are a class B Ethernet site, and we bridge to Ethernet using a Kinetics fastpath 4. I am told that uShare also works with EtherTalk cards. It took us a while to figure out the configuaration of the uShare files and the Fastpath, because we are not (by any means) TCP/IP or LocalTalk experts. However, tech. support at IPT was first rate. The software has been very reliable - no crashes to date. We have been running for two weeks. There was no "built-in" accounting for the print spoolers, but it was very easy to incorporate our own accounting on the Unix end. In fact, we decided to use MacPs instead of uShares software, because we had the source for that. We modified MacPs to find the user name and page count from Postscript files from the Mac. Let me repeat that Mac users do not have to Clover-K or anything funny like that. The only caveat about accounting is that the name used is the name in the chooser dialog box. There is no way we can think of of password protecting access from the macs. The appleshare part of uShare works fine. I haven't done a lot with it, but I am enjoying the ability to edit Unix files with Mac editors. And, unlike Tops, I don't have to worry about converting line feeds to carriage returns - thats all invisible. Michael Levy, Department of Computer Science, University of Victoria email: mlevy@csr.uvic.ca OR mlevy@uvicctr.BITNET