🚀 go-pugleaf

roy@ics.uci.edu (John M.A. Roy) writes:
>I hear TOPS is pretty good.  I want to connect IIcx's to XT's running
>DOS and Model 80's running OS/2, all connect to a IInt laser printer.
>All we really need on the IBM side is basic laser printing and ASCII
>file transfer to the Macs.  Anything else will be great, but not
>essential.  Will TOPS handle this?  How many stations can TOPS handle
>without crawling along.  

There's a problem with that.  Sun MicroSystems hasn't developed TOPS for OS/2,
in fact, other than DayStar Digital there isn't even an AppleTalk card that
supports microchannel.  

If NFS is available for OopS/2 (which I highly doubt) then your only option is
to hang a ethernet board off the PC and the PS/2 and get a GatorBox to do the
AFP <-> NFS translation.  

The problem is OS/2, I really haven't seen anybody other than MicroSoft
develop anything for it.  If you had it running SCO Xenix/Unix then your
problems would be minimized and if worse comes to worse, you could always
probably run TOPS as a DOS task under VP/ix.  To give you an idea of how OS/2
is looked upon by developers, Borland has abandoned Turbo C for OS/2 and they
didn't do it as a result of some marketing wizard saying let's cut it, they
polled their users both amateur programmers and developers than use Turbo C
and not a single one develops applications for OS/2 nor ever plan to.
MicroSoft seems to own the monopoly on development for OS/2 because of one,
they produce the only C compiler that supports development of OS/2
applications.  Two, they developed OS/2.  Three, OS/2 only really runs on
PS/2's (the full version that utilizes MCA).  Four, SCO Xenix 286 is faster
(and this is my biased opinion).
 
I could be wrong on the accounts of what's available for OS/2, but I do know
that a lot of people just mothball it when they get a PS/2 and run
MS-DOS 3.30 or MCA version of SCO Xenix.

The only thing that OS/2 seems to have going for it is its ability to
utilitize MCA, and that's it.  I personally don't expect to see TOPS for OS/2
unless it really catches on or TOPS/Sun MicroSystems has developed their MCA
AppleTalk card.

Your only hope really unless somebody is working on AppleTalk for OS/2 is to
dump OS/2 for another operating system.  Again, I could be wrong, but I
haven't heard anything of Sun MicroSystems working on TOPS or PC-NFS for OS/2.
 
                                                // John C. Archambeau

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