dnb@meshugge.media.mit.edu (David N. Blank) (02/21/91)
Howdy-
I thought it might help others if I summarized the results of my
appletalk "rwall" question: "Does there exist a utility with which I
can send a broadcast message to all of the users on our appletalk
internet?" My many thanks to all who responded, it was greatly
appreciated. Here are all of the suggestions I received (in no
particular order):
1) BroadCast - sumex-aim.stanford.edu:info-mac/comm
Topping the list of most frequent recommendation. This seems to be
the most widely available of the appletalk message utilities.
BroadCast is a cdev which allows you to send a message to a specific
Mac (which also must have the cdev installed) or all of the Mac's in
the zone. There does not appear to be a "send to all of the zones"
option. The documentation from sumex indicates that it is shareware
(with a really interesting fee: $25 per zone, $100 for a whole
internet). The doc also promises to provide the ability to send
messages from UN*X when you register.
2) Appletalk Jam -- giza.cis.ohio-state.edu:/mac
By far the scarcest utility, the site I listed is the only one I
could locate. This app does Mac-Mac chatting (more like the utility
"talk" from UN*X or "phone" from VMS), but no global broadcasts as far
as I can tell.
3) Telex -- sumex-aim.stanford.edu:/info-mac/comm
Similar to broadcast, it sends a message at a time via a DA to
other Macs with the telex listener installed.
4) Messages --- munnari.oz.au:mac
I'd say we have a winner here. This package provides 1) an cdev
which does the (selective) receiving, 2) a DA to send messages to
other macs, 3) source to UN*X programs which (using the CAP library)
to provide a "who, write, to, wall, and biff" to macs. It also allows
you to register yourself on the appletalk network from your UN*X box.
This allows you to receive messages on the UNIX box from a MAC running
the messages DA. Hats off to the author, djh@munnari.oz.au!
That's the lot of them. I did not include one suggestion for a
package which did server software metering but had additional features
for this kind of stuff. Hope this helps.
Peace,
dNb