JOHNBARNES@ENH.NIST.GOV (01/15/91)
DAYNA has recently announced a producty called "EtherPrint" which purports to provide LocalTalk to EtherNet bridging for use with LocalTalk equipped printers. There has been a lot of talk on this newsgroup about ways to share LaserWriters in a heterogenous network of PC's, UNIX boxes, and Macs. Terms like FastPath and GatorBox keep coming up, and I am wondering if the DAYNA product is a proper substitute for these rather pricey items. We propose to connect a NEC LC890 Silentwriter to our Ethernet for shared access. The net contains a SGI Iris workstation which, cliould, in a pinch be used as a server. The DAYNA box might be better solution in some ways. Please e-mail summaries of experience, opinions, are advice to JOHNBARNES@ENH.NIST.GOV or JOHN@POLY1.NIST.Gov
dyer@spdcc.COM (Steve Dyer) (01/15/91)
In article <D4CF4514767F00015F@ENH.NIST.GOV> JOHNBARNES@ENH.NIST.GOV writes: >DAYNA has recently announced a producty called "EtherPrint" which purports to >provide LocalTalk to EtherNet bridging for use with LocalTalk equipped >printers. There has been a lot of talk on this newsgroup about ways to >share LaserWriters in a heterogenous network of PC's, UNIX boxes, and Macs. >Terms like FastPath and GatorBox keep coming up, and I am wondering if the >DAYNA product is a proper substitute for these rather pricey items. The EtherPrint box works fine with RU-CAP using the "papif" utility plus TransScript. I'm running CAP on a Sun SLC and share a TI Microlaser PS with a Mac IIfx. -- Steve Dyer dyer@ursa-major.spdcc.com aka {ima,harvard,rayssd,linus,m2c}!spdcc!dyer dyer@arktouros.mit.edu, dyer@hstbme.mit.edu
steve@antares.anu.oz.au (Steven Ball) (01/18/91)
JOHNBARNES@ENH.NIST.GOV writes: >DAYNA has recently announced a producty called "EtherPrint" which purports to >provide LocalTalk to EtherNet bridging for use with LocalTalk equipped >printers. There has been a lot of talk on this newsgroup about ways to >share LaserWriters in a heterogenous network of PC's, UNIX boxes, and Macs. >Terms like FastPath and GatorBox keep coming up, and I am wondering if the >DAYNA product is a proper substitute for these rather pricey items. While I haven't actually seen an EtherPrint device from what I gather the EtherPrint connects a _single_ LaserWriter to the Ethernet. I don't know whether it is a real, direct connection for the printer or whether the EtherTalk packets are feed into the LaserWriter's Localtalk port (sort of a mini-gateway). The only protocol conversion might be EtherTalk to AppleTalk. The only higher-level protocol being used here is PAP. Devices such as the Webster MultiPort Gateway (a fine Australian product :-), Kinetics FastPath, GatorBox, etc, are general-pupose LocalTalk-to-Ethernet gateways performing various protocol conversions at various levels, eg. AppleTalk<->EtherTalk, DDP<->KIP, AppleTalk<->DECnet and at higher levels AppleShare<->NFS. These devices allow several LocalTalk devices to be `connected' to the Ethernet, ie an entire LocalTalk network can be internetworked with the Ethernet. So, is an EtherPrint a substitute for a MultiPort Gateway/KBox/GatorBox? The answer is no. A typical situation in which you would use EtherPrint devices is where all of your computers (Unix boxes, Macs, PCs) are on Ethernet. In this case there is no point in introducing LocalTalk cabling and gateways. Now, most sites that I've seen with Macintoshes have LocalTalk networks since LocalTalk is built into every Mac and its fairly expensive (and not always necessary) to drop an Ethernet card in a Mac. In this case put your printer on the LocalTalk and buy a MultiPort Gateway. However, if your site is mostly PCs then an Ethernet card is not much more money than a LocalTalk board so you may as well put Ethernet in your PCs. In this case buy an EtherPrint. Two caveats: a) Your particular site may (will) change the story. Eg. You have Macs w/- LocalTalk network & gateway, but the printer is to be situated nowhere near LocalTalk cabling but handy to the Ethernet... in this case you might go with EtherPrint. b) X EtherPrints cost about the same as a gateway. I think X = 4 at the moment. You can connect lots of printers to a single gateway, so if you have X + 1 (5) or more printers then it is more cost-effective to buy a gateway. (There has already been a discussion on the cost-effectiveness of this soln... so no flames/repeat discussions please! :-) >We propose to connect a NEC LC890 Silentwriter to our Ethernet for shared >access. The net contains a SGI Iris workstation which, cliould, in a pinch >be used >as a server. The DAYNA box might be better solution in some ways. Of course another solution is to hang the printer off the Iris via a serial line and use CAP to spool to it. >Please e-mail summaries of experience, opinions, are advice to >JOHNBARNES@ENH.NIST.GOV or JOHN@POLY1.NIST.Gov -- Steven Ball, Department of Computer Science, ANU E-mail: steve@anucsd.anu.edu.au Ph. (06) 2495147 Snail-mail: GPO Box 4, CANBERRA CITY ACT 2600, AUSTRALIA He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy!