🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <26558@dhw68k.cts.com> bytebug@dhw68k.cts.com (Roger L. Long) writes:
#>Would anyone care to enlighten me as to the ins and outs of Macintosh
#>networking?  I work in a small company where there are two Mac IIs and

#>Our needs are:
#>  a) NO SERVERS - We're not rich (yet), and we'd all like to continue
#>     using the machines that we have.  This rules out AppleShare, I 
#>     guess...

You could also consider Novell with which you could use a cheap
PC clone as the server. I think you'd also need an Ethernet board
(rumor has it that Novell will have one for about $300 which is
better (faster) than already existing ones. Actually, I guess you
could use a PC as server with TOPS, too, since any machine in the
network can be a server (but you don't need a server, you say).

#>  d) sharing printer(s) - See (a).  We're not rich (yet), and all we have
#>     here now is a couple of Imagewriters.  Is there an alternative to
#>     upgrading one or both to be Appletalk Imagewriters?  (Would such a
#>     solution require enough of the CPU that we'd want to upgrade the
#>     Imagewriters so that the person printing would be talking directly
#>     to the printer.)

If you want the printer on the network, it needs an Appletalk
board. But if you have two printers and two Macs, why not leave
them dedicated?

#>  e) hook up other machines - Eventually we'd might like to hook up an
#>
#>So, the question of the day - what hardware and software do we need? 
#>
#>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.
#>
#>And that leaves me to solve (c), (d), and (e) with other hardware/software.
#>Any suggestions for email for a small set of machines?  Network print
#>spoolers?

I'm not familiar with PSN; we've got TOPS and Novell in our
office (though our Macs aren't hooked up to Novell because
we networked first). Both TOPS and Novell deal with c, d, and e.
TOPS comes with a spooler and can connect Macs, PCs, and Unix
machines (I'm about to get a connection to a VAX for a server
and backup purposes). The main difference between the two is
speed because Novell uses Ethernet. Until recently, the speed
difference was reported to be small. But our tech who installed
Novell tells me the new board will be significantly faster. You
don't really need a network print spooler. On our network, one
user has SuperLaserSpool (single user), two are using TOPS
spool, and I use Multifinder to print in the background. Such
an arrangement works fine unless you want to be able to control
the queue of the entire network rather than queues from each
user. In summary, without knowing about PSN, TOPS is the
cheapest, but Novell is fastest. (I'm pretty sure Novell does
require a server, though.)

Steve Goldfield
College of Engineering
UC Berkeley