[su.computers] Appletalk with an ibm-pc?

casbs@csli.Stanford.EDU (Lynn Gale) (07/01/89)

I would like to hear from any of you who have used an IBM-PC on an
Appletalk network.  In particular, there is a board for the pc called
the LocalTalk PC card, which when connected with a LocalTalk connector
apparently lets the pc share resources with a Mac, using software
called Appleshare PC (which I presume comes with the hardware).

I haven't been able to come up with any specific info about this
process, so I was hoping somebody on the net had some first-hand
experience.  We have a Mac II with an internal hard disk and we were
wondering if the PC (no hard disk) could use some of its storage.

Some specific concerns are:
(1) is the interface straightforward from the pc-user's viewpoint,
i.e., does the Mac's hard disk look like just another disk drive to
DOS applications?
(2) will this work on a simple dual-floppy pc (no hard disk)?  Can the
appleshare software and an application (e.g. Microsoft Word) share one
320K disk, with the other disk free for the user's own documents?  Or,
even better, could the DOS applications software be stored on the Mac
hard disk?
(3) if users are on both machines simultaneously, is there any obvious
interference in performance?
(4) any other negatives to watch out for?

Thanks much!
Lynn
casbs@csli.stanford.edu
x3.a37@stanford.bitnet