heath@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu (Todd Heatherton) (07/21/88)
Has anyone recently compared the available products for transfering data from IBM's to Macs (and back). I know there are now a wide variety of products available (SoftPC, Daynafile, Laplink, MacLink) but I'm not sure which is the best (easiest, most flexible) to use. I would especially appreciate information on the diskdrives which are directly connectable (to either the PC or the Mac), as they would seem to be our first choice. Any information would be appreciated. Send e-mail to heath@gpu.utoronto and I will post a summary.
tj@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu (Terry Jones) (07/21/88)
The original poster asked about the various methods of transfering files to and from Mac and PC's. We use TOPS and it is a VERY functional solution to many things but is very expensive. You need a tops board for the PC and software for both the PC and the Mac but once you have it all you can share disks between Mac and PC like they each owned it. rag files into the PC disk from the Mac Desktop, look at them on the PC as a sub directory etc. Another recent solution is one the author sort of mentioned. LapLink Mac. This is an inexpensive solution if two machines need to transfer files back and forth. It costs around $143 from a slick operation called traveling software on the west coast. It comes with a cable to hook a PC to the Mac (Point, the cable comes with a 9 AND a 25 pin DB connector on one end for the PC and a DB9 and a DIN8 connector on the other end for earlier and recent Macs!!) It is software that runs on both the PC and the Mac. The mac side is passive, disappointing a little but I suspect the IBM side was easy to do since it is like earlier PC-PC programs from the same group. So you sit on the PC and one half the screen shows the PC disk, the other shows the Mac disk. You can tag selected files to copy, do wildcopy, etc. You also have options to add the proper application information to the files as they are written to the Mac disk so that you can just double click them to get them open. It is all menu driven from the PC side and is really slick. There is my suggestions.
psych@watdcsu.waterloo.edu (R.Crispin - Psychology) (07/21/88)
We purchased a Dayna file with a 360k 5.25 and a 720K 3.5. It has been used at least once on every work day for the last 3 months. We have not had a single problem with it. We found it easy to set up and use. The init for the drive is large so we can't run fullwrite on a Plus when it is installed (still waiting for my memory upgrade). The software does not support FullWrite or WordPerfect on the Mac or WP 5 on the IBM side. This I hope will come out in the next release of MacLink (They actually produce the software). The only problem we have had is that in certain translations you cannot have a Mac file that is bigger than the magic 32K limit. This is not consistant for all the translaters but does seem to occur going from Word on the Mac to WordPerfect on the PC. Hope this is helpful Richard Crispin Dept. of Psychology Bitnet: psych@watdcs University of Waterloo Unix : psych@watdcsu.UWaterloo.ca Waterloo, Ont. Canada N2L 3G1 (519)885-1211 ext 2879
akk2@ur-tut (Atul Kacker) (07/22/88)
In article <1988Jul21.001824.2757@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu> tj@gpu.utcs.UUCP (Terry Jones) writes: Terry talks about TOPS and LapLink Mac... The solution I recommend over these is MacLink Plus. It comes with the required cables to connect Mac's and PC's. It also has translators to go from different IBM formats to Mac formats. Translators for the most popular word processing, database and spreadsheet packages are included. The file transfer rate is upto 57000 baud. I have been using this for a couple years and am very satisfied. The nice thing about the latest version is that you can use the translators with Apple File Exchange. In most cases, just transferring a PC file to the Mac is useless, unless it is translated to the proper format. -- Atul Kacker | Internet: akk2@tut.cc.rochester.edu | UUCP: {ames,cmcl2,decvax,rutgers}!rochester!ur-tut!akk2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------