🚀 go-pugleaf

verstee@gaul.csd.uwo.ca (Ronald Versteegh) writes:
>	I am looking for OS/2 networking software that will allow
>me to connect 3 computers (PCs) together in a peer to peer network.
>Will IBM's TCP/IP do this ? Can Lantastic for DOS be made to work ?
>Any help would be appreciated...  Thanks in advance, Ron.

Yes, IBM's TCP/IP software can do this.  I don't know if Lantastic will
run under DOS atop OS/2.

With the base TCP/IP package alone, you can do a little.  It gives you
Ethernet communications with a few character-oriented communications
programs.  FTP will let you copy files back and forth (explicitly);
telnet will let you get a character-mode login on another OS/2 (or
other) machine.  The LPD/lprmon programs will let you use a printer
attached to one machine from all the other machines.  This works pretty
transparently: you set up lprmon on the client machines, it snatches
output sent to the parallel port(s) of your choice, and forwards the
stuff on to the LPD program running on the printer's machine.  From the
users' point of view, they just tell their program to print to LPT1,
LPT2, etc. to send stuff off to networked printers.  Multiple jobs
arriving simultaneously at the printing host are sorted out properly.

If you add on the NFS package, you can share disk drives.  All or part
of any machine's disk space can be made available for other machines to
use (in either read/write mode or read-only mode).  As far as the other
machines are concerned, the remotely mounted chunks of disk look like
additional drives.  At present there are a few glitches with the
integration of the NFS drives (e.g. drag-and-drop file copying doesn't
work correctly, though command line "copy this that" works fine).  All
the DOS or OS/2 programs I've used access the NFS networked disk space
quite happily.

For example, I keep all my personal files on a Sparc IPC running
SunOS.  When I walk up to any OS/2 machine in my lab, I double-click on
my login icon, provide my login name and password, and suddenly a drive
D: appears, with all my files and directories on the Sparc.  I read and
write files using Word and Word Perfect (Windows versions), edit files
with an OS/2 vi-clone, and do statistics with DOS-based stat packages.
When I'm done, I click on a "logoff" icon, and the D: drive
disappears.  

Works well for us.  Oh, with one recent exception.  Printing died
recently and I was called in to diagnose.  Couldn't figure out what was
wrong - jobs were queuing up, but just not coming out on the printer.
After a while I figured it out.  Someone in our lab who hadn't been
there much since the networking had, in a futile attempt to print,
physically recabled the printer to the computer where they were
working...  Which of course was sending its output to the print server
computer...  Oh well.  Replugged the printer, and all the jobs came
spewing out.

-Dean
--
[NOTE: my email address is different from where I read and post net news.]
Dean Pentcheff  (Internet: dean2@tbone.biol.scarolina.edu) (803) 777-8998
Department of Biology, University of South Carolina, Columbia SC 29205

In article <1993Jan24.230104.12668@julian.uwo.ca> verstee@gaul.csd.uwo.ca (RONALD VERSTEEGH) writes:
 >
 >	I am looking for OS/2 networking software that will allow
 >me to connect 3 computers (PCs) together in a peer to peer network.
 >Will IBM's TCP/IP do this ? Can Lantastic for DOS be made to work ?
 >Any help would be appreciated...  Thanks in advance, Ron.

If you get an answer, please post a summary. I asked a similar question
a while ago and received no answer.  

-- 
Guy W. Kendall - Applications Engineer          Guy.Kendall@FtCollinsCO.NCR.COM
NCR Microelectronic Products Division               Voice: 719-596-5795 x203
1635 Aeroplaza Drive                                  Fax: 719-597-8225
Colorado Springs, CO 80916                            BBS: 719-596-1649 

	I've just installed the OS/2 TCP/IP base system, Network File System,
and Xwindows System Server.  I have a Wyse 370 color terminal and a Relysis
170cp.  Can I connect these to a serial port on my 486 server? If so, how?
	If this is not possible how do I connect another pc to my server?
The manuals from IBM do not discuss any connection outside of Ethernet.
Must I use these or can I connect my 486Server to a 386pc via serial port.
What kind of perfomance can I expect.
	I am trying to put together a small network without the overhead
of Novell or IBM's equivalent.  I can't afford to dedicate a server and
very much like the idea of distributed computing.
	Where does the Xwindow fit into all of this?  I have tried Desqview/X
between to systems and liked it very much except tha it was still Dos.
However, could I connect a PC w/Desqview/X to my Server utilizing the
Xwindow System Server included with the IBM TCP/IP?
	Very much appreciate any help I can get.
Wally Waggoner
wow@cup.portal.com

wow@cup.portal.com (wallace otis waggoner) writes:
>	I've just installed the OS/2 TCP/IP base system, Network File System,
>and Xwindows System Server.  I have a Wyse 370 color terminal and a Relysis
>170cp.  Can I connect these to a serial port on my 486 server? If so, how?

I think (but I am not sure - I've never done this) that you might be
able to use a program called OS2You (available via anonymous FTP from
the OS/2 archive on ftp-os2.nmsu.edu).  But basically, OS/2 is not
set up to support serial terminals.  All you'd ever get is a command-
line interface.  This is not what you really want to see with a
graphical operating system like OS/2.

>	If this is not possible how do I connect another pc to my server?
>The manuals from IBM do not discuss any connection outside of Ethernet.
>Must I use these or can I connect my 486Server to a 386pc via serial port.
>What kind of perfomance can I expect.

The best option by far is to buy an Ethernet board for each of your
PCs.  Check the most recent issue of PC Magazine for a review of
zillions of Ethernet boards.  We're talking $100 for a cheap but
adequate board.  Make sure you get it with NDIS software, if it's
not a board that's comes with a driver in IBM's LAPS package.  In
theory you could do it via serial ports, using the SLIP (Serial Line
IP) driver included with the TCP/IP package, but (a) the performance
will be terrible; and (b) it's not worth the trouble since Ethernet
boards are pretty cheap.

>	I am trying to put together a small network without the overhead
>of Novell or IBM's equivalent.  I can't afford to dedicate a server and
>very much like the idea of distributed computing.

You can do that using IBM's TCP/IP package.  The Base package alone
will let you do transparent printer sharing, copy files back and forth
("ftp"), and get a command-line login on other machines ("telnet").
Add the NFS package and you can share files.  Portions of other
computers' disks appear as additional disk drives on your machine and
are accessed over the Ethernet.

>	Where does the Xwindow fit into all of this?  I have tried Desqview/X
>between to systems and liked it very much except tha it was still Dos.
>However, could I connect a PC w/Desqview/X to my Server utilizing the
>Xwindow System Server included with the IBM TCP/IP?

For the sort of network you're considering, X Windows doesn't fit in.
X Windows is a protocol (developed for Unix machines, originally) to
allow a program to run on one machine, but display (and get keyboard
input) from another machine.  This becomes very useful if you've got
a Unix host on your network.  Then you can run X programs on the host
and have them display on OS/2 machines - i.e. use the Unix as the
powerful back-end and the OS/2 machines as display front-ends.  The
reason this doesn't work for an OS/2 network (yet!) is that there
are no programming tools to allow one to develop X Windows programs
the actually run on OS/2 (i.e. the core program both runs and can
display on OS/2 systems).  We hope this situation will change soon, but
for the time being, if you don't have X applications on a Unix box
that you can access over the net, the X Windows package will do you
no good.

On further consideration (and actually _reading_ what you wrote):  X
Windows might not be useless IF Desqview/X can serve as an X Windows
client (confusingly, in X terminology, the "client" is the machine that
runs the core program; the "server" is the machine that runs the
display front-end).  The IBM package is an X "server" (i.e. display
front-end).  Desqview/X can certainly act as a "server" also, but
whether it also has "client" capabilities (i.e. can run a program that
displays elsewhere), I don't know.  If it does, then you could run
client programs on your Desqview/X PC and have them display on your
OS/2 machine.

>	Very much appreciate any help I can get.
>Wally Waggoner
>wow@cup.portal.com

You're very welcome.  For further gory details on TCP/IP under OS/2,
see the document "/pub/os2/2.0/network/tcpstart.txt" on the archive
server ftp-os2.nmsu.edu.

-Dean
-- 
Dean Pentcheff (Internet: dean2@tbone.biol.scarolina.edu) (803) 777-8998
Department of Biology, University of South Carolina, Columbia SC 29205