tom@shark.cs.fau.edu (Thomas B. Horton) (11/30/90)
I need information on purchasing software to connect a Mac II to an Ethernet so that Mac software can print directly to a Postscript printer attached to a UNIX machine (a NeXT) on our network. I'm not a Mac user or a regular reader of this group; I help oversee a network of UNIX machines in our Comp. Sci. department. We've been completely UNIX up till now, but we've just hired a new prof who's convinced us she really does need a Mac. So I'm on totally new ground here, and our local computer center isn't strong on Macs either. We are planning to buy her a Mac IIsi and an Apple Ethertalk card, and some sort of TCP/IP software. Our belief is that this should allow the basic sort of thing: remote log-ins to read mail on the UNIX machine, file transfers, etc. But we're not in the position to buy her a personal printer for her new Mac. We have a NeXT with a Postscript printer attached, and we're hoping that we can set things up so that she can print directly to this printer. The ugly way to do this would require her to dump her output to a Postscript file, ftp this up to the NeXT, then rlogin to the NeXT and print it from there. (Could of course set up a daemon on the NeXT that checks a particular directory periodically and prints everything it finds there....) The ideal solution would be for the NeXT's printer to appear to her Mac just as if it were a local printer or on a AppleTalk network. Will Apple's MacTCP software give us this? Our computer center has given me some info on DEC's new DEC LanWORKS for the Mac. This seems to give exactly the kind of service we want, except it does this for the Mac and VAX VMS. We could always get the computer center to define our NeXT's printer as a VAX printer (using remote spooling and the TCP/IP software on the VAX), then use DEC LanWORKS and the Mac software that comes with it; she could then print directly and transparently to a VAX print queue that was really our NeXT printer. This should work (right?) but seems like it goes around the barn -- surely we shouldn't have to route printed files through the VAX?! We're only going to have one Mac, so it's not a question of connecting a Mac network with a UNIX network. Surely others have run into this problem. Hopefully there's a good simple, solution. But as I said, this is new for me. Thanks for any help. Please respond directly to me, and I'll summarize back to the group. Also, let me know if there's another group that might be better for this question. Tom Dr. Thomas B. Horton Department of Computer Science Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, FL 33431 USA Phone: 407/367-2674 FAX: 407/367-2800 Internet: tom@cs.fau.edu Bitnet: HortonT@fauvax Dr. Thomas B. Horton Department of Computer Science Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, FL 33431 USA Phone: 407/367-2674 FAX: 407/367-2800 INTERNET: tom@cs.fau.edu BITNET: HortonT@fauvax