shull@SCROLLS.WHARTON.UPENN.EDU (Christopher E. Shull) (06/01/88)
Jeremy Brest of Swarthmore College asked about the requirements of high-speed (Ethernet-based) network printers, especially protocols and software that must be used by machines that share such resources. In particular, he asked about DEC's PrintServer-40, hooked up to Vaxen, Macs, IBM-PCs, and Unix boxes, hoping that TCP/IP could be the basis for communication between nodes and the printer. I know a bit about the PS-40, which we have here at Wharton. It is a DECnet box, with, so far as I can see, no plans for TCP/IP, Sun NFS, Apollo NCS, or other useful multi-vendor protocol set. I suspect that you may be able to use various DECnet products and DECnet-compatible offerings from the likes of DEC, Apple and Sun to get some of the function you desire, but until DEC decides that Unix isn't really snake-oil after all, I doubt we'll see anything on the PS-40 except DECnet. I think Imagen used to have a TCP/IP Ethernet-able product, but this is only a vague recollection from two years ago. Xerox also used to offer an XNS Ethernet product, but I don't know anything about its current status. -Chris Christopher E. Shull Decision Sciences Department The Wharton School shull@wharton.upenn.edu University of Pennsylvania shull@scrolls.wharton.upenn.edu Philadelphia, PA 19104-6366 215/898-5930 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!" Admiral Farragut, USN, 1801-1870 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------