🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <26558@dhw68k.cts.com> bytebug@dhw68k.cts.com (Roger L. Long) writes:
>By eliminating AppleShare because of (a) above, it looks to me like that
>leaves Tops and something called "Personal Server Network" from Information
>Presentation Technologies, Inc.  Can anyone give me the pros and cons of
>choosing one over the other?  I'm tending to lean towards PSN because I've
>heard that they adhere to AFP, where Tops has it's own protocol.

Pro's of PSN: 

   * It does indeed adhere to AFP, which among other things means that you
     will only need to purchase software for the Macs that want to serve
     files (clients use standard AppleShare client software).

   * It's cheaper (lists for $145 for a two-node license, compared to $249
     for a single-node TOPS license).

   * No brain-damaged serial-number copy protection scheme.

   * Consumes less memory than TOPS.

Cons of PSN:

   * Installation is somewhat more complex than TOPS.  Actually, installing
     the software itself is not really more complicated (just drag a few
     files over); it's running the administration program to establish user
     ID's, groups, file permissions, etc.  Of course, this is really due to
     the nature of AppleShare itself.  On the upside, you get a much richer
     system of file security than you do with TOPS, and all the permissions
     are visually integrated into the Finder.  If you're in a hurry, you
     could always do a "quickie" installation where you just set up one user
     ID, and make all files available to that user ID (which is basically
     analogous to what you get when you publish a TOPS volume).

     One other significant difference to note between PSN and TOPS.  With
     PSN, like AppleShare, the basic publishable entity is a volume.  With
     TOPS, it's a folder.  With TOPS, if I have some folder on my disk that
     I would like to make available, I can publish just that folder, and
     the rest of the disk is not visible (i.e., a user mounting that entry
     would see the folder contents as the top level).  With PSN, you can
     only publish on a volume by volume basis.  A user mounting your disk
     "sees" the entire volume.  But of course, what the user can actually see
     or change is strictly controlled by whatever files permissions you
     have assigned.  The bottom line is that you can get the same behavior
     as described above with TOPS, but it requires a bit more thought.

   * Mac Pluses are currently not supported as servers.  This is because of
     the lack of certain ROM code in the Plus.  I called IPT's tech support
     and found that it is possible to get around this by installing the
     "AppleTalk" system file and increasing the size of the system heap.
     IPT doesn't officially support this, however, and they don't recommend 
     it for 1-meg machines. They said that do plan on supporting the Plus 
     in a future release.

My personal recommendation would be to give PSN a shot; overall it has
a lot of advantages over TOPS, and the drawbacks are relatively minor.

>And that leaves me to solve (c), (d), and (e) with other hardware/software.

As for e), I believe that both IPT and TOPS have versions for IBM
PCs/clones.


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Mark Vita                              vita@crd.ge.com
General Electric CRD               	..!uunet!crd.ge.com!vita
Schenectady, NY