donp@na.excelan.com (don provan) (01/17/91)
In article <296@erb1.engr.wisc.edu> wittmann@erb1.UUCP (art wittmann) writes: >ODI is a completely different story. The only word I've heard is >from a friend who works in the industry. According to him, I may as >well not even try - unless I feel like barfing up $7500.00. This is essentially correct, i'm afraid: the only way to get an official copy of the ODI spec is to buy a "LAN Driver's Development Kit" which normally costs precisely the aforementioned $7,500.00. To be fair, this "kit" includes various specs, test programs, sample code, and stuff like that. It's definitely intended for commercial developers serious about producing ODI drivers, getting them certified by Novell, and selling them to paying customers. Those of us here at Novell plugged into the netnews and Internet communities are painfully aware that this pricing in unacceptable to a large number of potential ODI developers, and we're trying to sort this out with the appropriate people back in comporate central in Provo. (I myself choked when they told *me* that my department would have to fork out $7,500 to their department for me to get a copy!) >When I hear numbers like that, I tend to agree with Russ' statement, >it doesn't look like ODI is a reasonable interface to which to program. Perhaps i'm just forgetting, but i don't recall Russ saying anything like that. Russ' central point is that ODI is expensive, and your information supports that. I don't think you can make any claim as to how reasonable it is unless price is your sole criteria. >Of course I haven't even seen any technical literature, so I can't really >comment on the technical merits of ODI. Please correct me if I'm >wrong about pricing & let me know where I can get information on ODI >for a "reasonable" price. We're working on it, even harder now that this discussion has revealed so much real interest in it. don provan donp@novell.com