[comp.mail.uucp] RamNet: Anybody ever used it?

hal@world.std.com (Harry A Levinson) (04/25/91)

I am trying to setup a bunch of DOS machines as Point-of-Sale terminals
and would like to have uucp type mail and file transfers available
in the background.  We have a Sys V/386 system that we want to use
to communicate with these remote POS systems.

We are currently using a product called SideTalk from MagicSoft (ever
heard of it?).  The nicest thing about this TSR comm software is
that it only takes about 80K.  Most of the others that we have
looked at take at least twice that.  The drawback is that it only
talks to itself.  Does anyone know if this company still exists?

I recently received a flyer on a program called RamNet from Software
Concepts Design.  It is supposed to be a TSR version of uucp with mail
and other nice features.  Does anyone have any comments on this product
or another product worth investigating? (It does not have to be
commercially supported.)

Thanks,
harry
hal@world.std.com

shwake@raysnec.UUCP (Ray Shwake) (04/25/91)

hal@world.std.com (Harry A Levinson) writes:

>I recently received a flyer on a program called RamNet from Software
>Concepts Design.  It is supposed to be a TSR version of uucp with mail
>and other nice features.  Does anyone have any comments on this product
>or another product worth investigating? (It does not have to be
>commercially supported.)

	Our office picked up a few copies some time back for internal
evaluation. We had a number of users who *had* to run from DOS PC's, but
wanted to connect to our UUCP-based servers for email. After much frustration,
I gave up trying to get it to work. It's configurations are not at all like
standard UUCP - they deviate even more than UULINK. I was only able to mail
to users on the local system - and the mailer is rather primitive. Tried 
the public domain FSUUCP and WAFFLE programs. Couldn't get FSUUCP working,
but WAFFLE's UUCP worked well. 

	In summary, of those attempted, I'd say go with Waffle. Documentation
isn't up to UN!X standards (sic) but if you can't make it fly at least it
cost only time. Doesn't run as a TSR as I recall, but it might work within
a Desqview or Windows environment.

-----------  
uunet!media!ka3ovk!raysnec!shwake				shwake@rsxtech

les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) (04/26/91)

In article <1991Apr24.213233.14450@world.std.com> hal@world.std.com (Harry A Levinson) writes:
>I am trying to setup a bunch of DOS machines as Point-of-Sale terminals
>and would like to have uucp type mail and file transfers available
>in the background.  We have a Sys V/386 system that we want to use
>to communicate with these remote POS systems.

>We are currently using a product called SideTalk from MagicSoft (ever
>heard of it?).  The nicest thing about this TSR comm software is
>that it only takes about 80K.  Most of the others that we have
>looked at take at least twice that.  The drawback is that it only
>talks to itself.  Does anyone know if this company still exists?

If you want a commercial product, you might look at the ACCESS-PLUS
package from AT&T that is intended to be used with their attmail
service.  They also have a program for 3B2 and 386 unix machines
so you can set up your own local hubs (called PMXPC).  The ACCESS-PLUS
portion is a mail user interface that runs on a PC that can be run with
or without TSR's (one communication, one pop-up mail program, and
one pop-up directory program).  Running just the communications
TSR takes about 60K.  It does not accept calls, but can be programmed
to place calls at particular times or intervals.

It doesn't use uucp protocol so it will only talk to the attmail
system or the pmxpc program on your unix machine, but there are
variations of the theme for networked DOS machines which can
talk to each other or use unix mail as the transport if you happen
to be using the AT&T StarGroup network server.

There are a few things I don't like about this system, but it does
mesh pretty well with normal unix mail while still allowing you to
attach any type of file to a message for transmission.  That latest
version I've seen wouldn't work with Windows, but perhaps that has
been fixed recently.

Les Mikesell
  les@chinet.chi.il.us