mo@seismo.UUCP (02/18/87)
There are several alternatives. The FASTPATH box from Kinetics will let machines on Ethernets talk to Appletalk nets, with the appropriate software (available, I think, from Columbia). Another alternative - Van Jacobson at Lawrence Berkeley Lab has a program which runs on a dedicated Macintosh (ideal job for a 128K machine) and uses a simple reliable protocol over a serial port to speak with Unixes, and they simply sends the stuff over Appletalk to the LW. Probably can use one of the new Laser Spoolers like the one from THINK. -Mike
dk1z#@andrew.cmu.edu.UUCP (02/19/87)
Kinetics supplies one version of the gateway code for the FastPath and Bill Croft supplies another. The latter is available from Sumex's Info-Mac archive and from russell.stanford.edu. In the near future, there will only be one version, Croft's, and Kinetics will be distributing that along with the FastPath's. Columbia distributes CAP, a package that allows printing to a LaserWriter from Unix and allows Macs to queue files to a LaserWriter by way of the Unix system. -David Kovar
cetron@utah-cs.UUCP (02/20/87)
After seeing some of the Unix -> lw ideas, I thought I'd throw in this request: I currently am running alisatalk on my appletalk network. This allows me to use my VMS (no unix vs. vms flames ) vax as a laser spooler as well as a file server. I am very happy with it except for one small problem, seems I can send postscript files from the mac to a spooler and the vax, and from there through a printer deamon out to the lw's. This works just fine. I can also use a program on the vax to print listings (text -> postscript -> lw) out to the lw's. This also works..... But now comes the hard part. I also have a vms vaxstation II/GPX which generates postscript and a Unix vax with also generates TransScript style postscript. Both of these machines will generate perfect output WHEN RUN IN THROUGH THE SERIAL PORT. And therein lies the rub. I would rather like to ftp these files to the vms server, and have it output the files direct via appletalk. (no cable switching).... Ok, I try this and nothing happens, the laserwriter lights flash as per normal and then nothing. Seems it has just flushed the job totally. So I capture a mac document going through and pull off its prolog, munge it down to a few lines and prepend it to the other types of files..... well, if I remove the %! first line from the GPX output, and add this prolog, the gpx files start to work. If I prepend the prolog to the GPX output WITH the %!, it flushes.... hmmmm. If i send the prolog and just a showpage it works...... ok, I figure the extra %! blows away the laserwriter, fine I can live with that (can't figure why, but so what? I'm a computer engineer not a computer scientist :-))... Now I try the same thing with the output from TranScript....Nothing, I fiddle with the prolog, nothing.....I try to download via appletalk the ehandler.ps from the transcript kit....nothing.....I'm stumped..... I have lots of example files which I will gladly send (but are too much to post). If anyone has any ideas, I'd like to hear from you. Or is it just impossible to send transcript and real postcript to the apple laserwriter via appletalk. Is there a difference in processing between the serial port and the appletalk port??? Is the laserprep file the culprit?? thanx, ed cetron center for engineering design univ of utah cetron@utah-cs.arpa cetron@utahcca.bitnet