ruth@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Ruth Aylett) (09/21/89)
We have a micro-explorer, which in its alternative incarnation is known
as a Mac II. We also have a large ethernet of Suns, from which hang
laser printers. The former is connected to the latter via an ethernet
card.
In micro-explorer mode, we can do file-transfer to the Suns, and also
act as a VT100 terminal. In Mac mode, we have no connection whatsoever.
What we would like to be able to do is use the laser printers on the
Suns - from both Mac and micro-explorer - in a transparent manner.
This posting is really an appeal to fellow micro-explorer owners to find
out if any of you have already solved this problem. If so, how? If not,
what was the problem?
I have come across various possible solutions to the Mac end of the
problem - use appleshare, uab and cap is one, shell out large sums of
money on ushare is another - but I am worried that these may impact the
micro-explorer in unintended ways. So please let me know if you have any
information about this too.
Thanks in advance,
Ruth Aylett
R.Aylett@aiai.uucp
R.Aylett@uk.ed.acacuff@SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU (Richard Acuff) (09/25/89)
We use CAP to spool to postscript printers (LaserWriters and Imagens with
UltraScript) and for filing (AppleShare via AUFS) in conjunction with
microExplorers with good results. Note that a Kinetics FastPath or equivalent
is needed for this setup as far as I know. There don't seem to be any
problems with using the microExplorer and these facilities at the same time,
though there were one or two very early in testing TI's software.
One thing that doesn't work is having the Mac and the microExplorer talk
TCP out the same interface (EtherTalk or LocalTalk). Apple has recently come
out with MacTCP, a TCP and UDP interface that allows more than one application
to use TCP/IP at the same time, and I'm pretty sure TI is working on
converting to use MacTCP, but for now you either have to reboot the Mac
between using the microExplorer and an application that uses MacTCP, or run
MacTCP over LocalTalk and the microExplorer over EtherTalk, as we do.
-- Rich
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