[comp.protocols.appletalk] Problem with Kinetics FastPath.

karen@kinetics.UUCP (karen) (07/08/89)

From article <29592.8907070118@yap.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>, by inei@cs.glasgow.ac.UK (Nick Nei):
> 
> After loading the 0688 s-records to the KFPS3, it stalls for about 20
> seconds and then says, "Sorry, The gateway appears to be busy".
> The KFPS3 has 3.00 EPROM revision.

I've have been hearing recently about this problem, though I hadn't
heard of it happening with a PROM version earlier than 4.0.  I've
generally heard that this happens on a net with a fair amount of traffic,
and my suspicions are that the FastPath receives a burst of traffic,
which fills up the few buffers that the PROM code allocates for itself.
It then can't receive the s-rec that you're trying to send it, because
it has no buffer to put the packet in, and drops the packet.  FastPath
Manager will retry a couple of times, and if it still doesn't receive an
ack for the s-rec, it puts up the (admittedly obscure) diagnostic.

I'm not sure how solid that diagnosis is, because I don't think it's
likely that you have so much LocalTalk traffic that the buffers are
all being filled up.

One way to deal with the problem is to download on a quiet net, or
disconnect the Ethernet cable (though I don't think this is your
problem, since the 3.0 PROM doesn't have an Ethernet driver).  Another
option is to get a newer version of FastPath Manager from Kinetics'
tech support department (800-526-4872).  This version "tries harder"
than the old one to get the s-rec to the FastPath.

> The error message
> does not appear in the "Installation Guide" Appendix G "FastPath
> Diagnostic Messages".  

This is actually a FastPath Manager diagnostic, not a FastPath
diagnostic (they appear in the "Diagnostics" window), but you're
right, we should document it.  Thanks for pointing it out.

I hope that this helps you.

Karen Frisa
Software Engineer
Kinetics, a Division of Excelan, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Novell (whew!)
karen@kinetics.kinetics.com
...!ames!amdahl!kinetics!karen