drg@mdaali.cancer.utexas.edu (David Gutierrez) (03/02/91)
I've had an evaluation copy of the released version of Intercon's NFS/Share for about a week now and have had a pretty good look at the program. I like it. I like it a lot. It was (fairly) easy to install, it's easy to use, it works well, and it's fast. We've used IPT's uShare for about a year and a half and, while it worked most of the time, it was slow and occasionally hung up for no apparent reason. This was particularly annoying because it also hung up the Sun workstation it was running on, as well as the Mac trying to mount a Sun volume. There was also a reproducible bug involving extended LocalTalk networks. Our LocalTalk network consist of three segments joined by Shiva NetBridges. One segment has a FastPath on it. If we tried to use uShare from a Mac not on the segment with the FastPath, uShare generated a packet storm that hung up the Mac, the Sun and the FastPath and brought the network police screaming down from the computer center. Lastly, it took IPT almost a year after offering us a version of uShare that supported AppleTalk Phase 2 to actually ship that version. They were too busy porting it to new platforms to port it to old ones. If possible, we intend to drop their product. The only thing we might keep is the Unix-to-LocalTalk printer support, unless we can find another product that will do that. But I digress. NFS/Share is an RDEV (Chooser document) that contains INIT code, so you just drop it into your System Folder and reboot. The INIT eats 64k of RAM, plus an additional 160k for each NFS volume to be mounted. (You specify the maximum number of NFS volumes that can be mounted at one time in the Chooser.) When you mount a new volume there is a delay of a couple of seconds while DeskTop info is built. This info is retained on the NFS volume. This works much faster that uShare; I don't know if that's due to Intercon hiring better programmers or to some superiority of NFS over AFP. NFS/Share requires MacTCP. There is also a program called NFS/Test included in the package. It pops up a dialog box into which you type the names of your NFS servers. If the name is a valid server, it adds it to a list with a couple of icons next to it that seem to give some kind of info regarding privileges. I am unable to completely interpret these icons because the evaluation copy I have does not include any manuals. Fortunately, they aren't needed. Bugs: 1) NFS/Share must load *after* QuickMail and Responder, otherwise QuickMail and Responder will not work. 2) Although NFS/Share has an option to preserve DeskTop info (window size, window/icon position), this info is not preserved when you remount a volume. 3) NFS/Test will not run unless it is on your startup volume. Someone's been careless. Price: I don't know what the price is nor whether educational discounts or site licenses are available. I guess each site will have to negotiate that with Intercon. They have indicated a willingness to discuss such matters, which is more than Wollongong has been willing to do. I also hear that Shiva (the new FastPath makers) will be selling this product. They may offer a better deal to FastPath owners. Summary: This is a good product. It has a couple of minor bugs. I don't know if it includes a way for Unix users to use AppleTalk printers. If the price is not extortionate, we will buy it. I have no connection with Intercon, not even as a customer. If we buy NFS/Share, it will be my first purchase from them. David Gutierrez drg@mdaali.cancer.utexas.edu "Only fools are positive." - Moe Howard