craig@netcom.COM (Craig Hansen) (03/07/91)
We have Macs with localtalk (appletalk), localtalk Postscript printers, and Sun4 (SPARC) and other UNIX machines. We have no macintosh appleshare servers. We'd like to gateway mail between the macs and the UNIX machines (SMTP). We'd like to connect lpr on the UNIX machines to the printers (we already know how to generate postscript format files on the UNIX machines). We'd like to provide file service (AFP) from our big disks on the UNIX machines (NFS). We'd like to telnet, provide virtual terminal service, or even X window servers on our macs to access the UNIX machines. I'd love to hear suggestions on reliable software packages and gateway hardware that would make this ideal world possible. We figure there must be others who were once like us, who are knowlegable on UNIX networking software, but have up to this point been plugging together phonenet connectors in the mac world without having to understand any of the mac networking jargon. So far, I've found no vendor that clearly solves these problems for anything less than a dozen kilobucks. We've used IPT's uShare product, but it's not reliable and it's hard to install and configure properly. Would you look toward (1) software to install on macs? (2) software to install on suns? (3) boxes with integrated software? Is the gateway function best performed using (1) an ethernet card in a mac? (2) an appletalk card in a sun? (3) a stand-alone box with ethernet and appletalk interfaces? Please respond by mail - I'll happily summarize responses in a follow-up posting. Thanks, Craig Hansen craig@netcom.com