bobm@agsm.unsw.oz (Robert Marks) (10/12/89)
We're considering replacing an aging Vax 11/780 under Unix SV.2.2 with a network of MacII*s under MacOS/Finder. But we have some expert troff users (we produce the Australian Journal of Management to camera-ready stage including the covers on our Vax+LaserWriters, and have some expert statisticians whose research is written up using the DWB tools (grap, pic, tbl, eqn, ditroff -mm). I can find no evidence that anyone is considering porting the DWB tools to the MacOS/Finder. But since A/UX includes the DWB 2.0 tools, the thought occurred to me to hang a headless MacII* off the Ethernet and allow users to remote-login using Telnet or somesuch to download their files (edited on their own machines) to the A/UX file server for troff processing and then printing from the network LaserWriter. (We could install a MacIIcx with 8 Mb RAM to serve the 6 or 8 users who would want to avail themselves of the A/UX.) Questions: 1. Our local guru (who has no direct experience of A/UX) claims that it would be a full-time job to support such a multi-user system, which I regard as a very unlikely claim. Anyone with experience? 2. He further disparages the response times for remote users on such a set-up, speaking a a four-minute delay for file retrieval and very slow log-ins. This is less of a worry, even if true, since our creaking Vax is already overloaded and not very fast at the best of times. I'd welcome any comments/personal experience on this, since I have volunteered to support such a file server (not the whole network, though), and I -- although an experienced user -- am not a sysop, yet. Thanks, Bob bobm@agsm.oz.au