dlw@hpsmtc1.HP.COM (David Williams) (02/05/88)
>Bill Leue writes: I talked to a technical support person from TOPS (was Centram, now part of Sun) today. I was interested to find out if TOPS supports a Mac II equipped with an EtherTalk card as a gateway machine from Ethernet to LocalTalk. (If it could work, it would be an alternative to buying a Kinetics box, since we already have the Mac.) She said that they do NOT support this configuration. She also said that part of the reason is that Apple has told them that if you plug an EtherTalk card into your Mac II, you can't use the LocalTalk ports at all! Has anyone heard of this limitation before? Mail replies to me and I will >summarize for the net. Hmmmm, I think what she means is that you can only have Ethertalk or LocalTalk active at any one time. The serial ports still function while ET is active, but they can not run Localtalk at the same time as ET is running. Essentially you activate ethertalk by choosing the Network icon in the control panel, Apple provides a CDEV for this with the ET card and you select if you want to run "built in" (which is localtalk) or the EtherTalk stuff. So plugging in an Ethertalk card does not blow away use of Localtalk. Hope this clears things up! Now when is the version of Tops with NFS support coming out? (read about it in infoworld so it must be tru 8)) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- David L. Williams dlw@hpda Hewlett Packard, Cupertino Ca Software Development Technology Laboratory Distributed Computing Environment Project Mailstop: 47LR "Sinanju, buddy -- the real stuff"
phssra@emory.uucp (Scott R. Anderson) (02/07/88)
In article <11540122@hpsmtc1.HP.COM> dlw@hpsmtc1.HP.COM (David Williams) writes: >>Bill Leue writes: >Hmmmm, I think what she means is that you can only have Ethertalk or LocalTalk >active at any one time. The serial ports still function while ET is active, >but they can not run Localtalk at the same time as ET is running. This is an unfortunate limitation! What if I want to print graphics or text from my UNIX login screen to my LocalTalked LaserWriter? Or receive mail over LocalTalk while logged in to UNIX? Or any number of other concurrent uses one can imagine! * Scott Robert Anderson * ** gatech!emoryu1!phssra * * * ** phssra@emoryu1.{bitnet,csnet} * * * * * ** * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
korn@apple.UUCP (Peter "Arrgh" Korn) (02/08/88)
In article <2584@emory.uucp> phssra@emory.UUCP (Scott R. Anderson) wrote: >In article <11540122@hpsmtc1.HP.COM> dlw@hpsmtc1.HP.COM (David Williams) wrote: >>Hmmmm, I think what she means is that you can only have Ethertalk or LocalTalk >>active at any one time. The serial ports still function while ET is active, >>but they can not run Localtalk at the same time as ET is running. > >This is an unfortunate limitation! What if I want to print graphics or text >from my UNIX login screen to my LocalTalked LaserWriter? Or receive mail over >LocalTalk while logged in to UNIX? Or any number of other concurrent uses one >can imagine! It is, and then again, it isn't a limitaiton. The first question to ask is, how are you connected to your UNIX login screen? Are you running A/UX and have a macintosh process running under A/UX that you want to print from? Are you running MacTerminal (or some other like program) that you've connected via a serial line to a UNIX host? via an AppleTalk line to a UNIX host? via an EtherNet TCP/IP line to a UNIX host? Lets assume your under A/UX. Then you will *need* to get a card (AST currently makes one) that puts LocalTalk on the NuBus to do LocalTalk, because the way it's implemented under the Mac OS (and on the Mac II board) is via interrupts; and this would flail A/UX alive (interrupting the kernel simply isn't done you know). Alternately you could have an EtherTalk card (ours or Knetics or someone elses), and talk AppleTalk protocalls via that card. Then, somewhere on your network, you will have an EtherTalk to LocalTalk bridge (such as the one made by Knetics), and on the LocalTalk net (or subnet, if you will), you will put your LaserWriters and Mac Plus, Mac SE, etc. machines. Alternately, let's say that you are running under the Mac OS, and have a macintosh program that allows you to connect to a host machine (again, like MacTerminal). Then, your connection to that host is via that program; no LocalTalk necessarily involved. If you have a program that embeds your connection in AppleTalk packets, (Knetics has some stuff to do this, as well as one or two other companies I believe), then again you are still using that LocalTalk connection on the back of your Mac. Lastly, you could be talking TCP/IP on a NuBus board to your UNIX host (again, under the Mac OS), and talking LocalTalk out of the back of your MacII. And with a board that does both TCP/IP and EtherTalk (AppleTalk packets on Ethernet cabling) at the same time, you could do it all that way. If you want a UNIX box to print on a LaserWriter, that's fine. That UNIX box has to either be connected to that LaserWriter via the serial connection (which will effectively force all connections to that LaserWriter to go through the UNIX box; the LaserWriter cannot take jobs simultaneously from it's serial and it's LocalTalk connections), or that UNIX box can somehow be on LocalTalk or EtherNet talking AppleTalk protocalls like everyone else. Another neat approach would be to set up your UNIX box on EtherNet talking AppleTalk protocalls as an AFP file server (basically AppleShare with a UNIX-based host). Further, you could have that UNIX box also be serving the LaserWriter that it's connected to serially (it broadcasts packets over EtherNet in AppleTalk protocall saying that it's a LaserShare-type server, and it can take LaserWriter jobs; which it will then spool to the LaserWriter it's connected to serially). If I'm not mistaken, several Universities have done the former; I'm not sure if any of them have their AFP servers also acting as AppleTalk print spoolers; but again, there is nothing in the protocall to prevent this. The limitation is simply this: you cannot have more than one active physical AppleTalk connection under the Mac OS (and there are even not-so-kosher ways of getting around this; but don't do it!). There is nothing to stop you from having other connections of other sorts at the same time. Hope this clears things up some... Peter
mz@well.UUCP (Michael Zentner) (02/08/88)
What is it ?
mz@well.UUCP (Michael Zentner) (02/09/88)
From another article I surmised that Localtalk is the Appletalk that allows direct connection of the Laserwriter to a Mac without the network. The reason Localtalk and Ethertalk don't work together is probably because they expect certain resources to be there that are specific to each of them but have the same resource name/number. This is the same situation with Asynchronous Appletalk and Regular Flavor Appletalk.
korn@apple.UUCP (Peter "Arrgh" Korn) (02/10/88)
In article <5193@well.UUCP> mz@well.UUCP (Michael Zentner) writes: > > [LocalTalk,] what is it ? In the beginning, there was AppleTalk. It consisted of some circutry inside a Macintosh CPU, some code to talk over that circutry, and some cables. As time went on, more protocalls were added to it, and the code portion of AppleTalk expanded; but even so, it was still all 'AppleTalk'. The cables were called 'AppleTalk' cables, talking 'AppleTalk' protocalls to devices that understood AppleTalk. Then the picture got more complex. The transport and physical layers of the network model started to change. No longer were all the protocalls strictly 'AppleTalk'. No longer were all of the possible cabling systems thin, twisted pair wiring. Ethernet cards and cabling came along, and started adding confusion (as well as speed) to the picture. And to differentiate things, Apple renamed some of the individual players that together make up Apple's networking picture. The card and circutry inside a machine that allows a Macintosh to send AppleTalk protocalls over Ethernet wiring is called "EtherTalk" (as in, "putting an Ethertalk card into your Mac II"). The cabling is called "Ethernet" (as in, "connect those two Mac II's together with an Ethernet cable"). What used to be known as "AppleTalk cabling" (the old twisted pair stuff that connected Mac Plus-type machines to LaserWriters in a network [not direct connect]) has been renamed "LocalTalk" (as in, "connect these Mac Plus machines together with LocalTalk"). The term "AppleTalk" now refers to only the protocalls (the medium level ones, like NBP, ATP, etc.), and the entire 'networking system' itself (as in, "does that xyz PostScript printer speak AppleTalk?"; or "I've got all the office machines talking to eachother via the AppleTalk networking system"). Another addition that may have not gotten the press that the LocalTalk name change has gotten is "AppleTalk services". A service is something provided over AppleTalk, above and beyond the network itself. For instance, AppleShare is an AppleTalk service. LaserShare is also an AppleTalk service. As are Intermail and In Box. These services also fall under the umbrella of "AppleTalk networking system". Hope this clears things up... Peter
rmh@apple.UUCP (Rick Holzgrafe) (02/10/88)
In article <5195@well.UUCP> mz@well.UUCP (Michael Zentner) writes: > >From another article I surmised that Localtalk is the Appletalk that >allows direct connection of the Laserwriter to a Mac without the network. > Nope. "LocalTalk" is the dialect of AppleTalk that is carried over those familiar little white cables that plug into the back of your Mac. "EtherTalk" is the dialect that is carried over EtherNet. They differ only in the lower-level members of the protocol stack. So "LocalTalk" is nothing strange - just a new name for the same old AppleTalk-and-little-white-cables that all of you networkers have been using for years. ========================================================================== Rick Holzgrafe | {sun,voder,nsc,mtxinu,dual}!apple!rmh Communications Software Engineer | AppleLink HOLZGRAFE1 rmh@apple.com Apple Computer, Inc. | "All opinions expressed are mine, and 20525 Mariani Ave. MS: 27-Y | do not necessarily represent those of Cupertino, CA 95014 | my employer, Apple Computer Inc."