Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!mit-eddie!rutgers!umn-d-ub!jness
From: jness@umn-d-ub.D.UMN.EDU (Joel Ness)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.appletalk
Subject: Re: Shiva NetSerial Review
Message-ID: <3074@umn-d-ub.D.UMN.EDU>
Date: 11 Dec 89 15:47:28 GMT
References: <1005@maytag.waterloo.edu>
Reply-To: jness@ub.d.umn.edu.UUCP (Joel Ness)
Organization: University of Minnesota, Duluth
Lines: 23


   We've just installed a NetSerial in a lab full of MacIIcx's to allow
them to share an HP PaintJet. It seems to work quite well and is
transparent to the user. You just select the HP driver in the chooser
and leave it set for printing out the phone port (even though there is
nothing hooked up to the phone port). The NetSerial driver intercepts
anything sent out the phone port, bundles it up in AppleTalk packets,
and shoots it out the printer port to the NetSerial device itself.

   The NetSerial device then unbundles the packets and prints right to
the HP as though it was connected directly to the Mac. If you have more
than one NetSerial on the network you can choose which one you want
things to go to right from the chooser. These things are more commonly
used to share a modem, and they can be set to modem pool--give you the
next available modem if you have more than one available.

   All in all we're happy with it and it's given us a cheap solution for
sharing a serial printer without burdening our students with using
switchboxes, etc. 

Joel Ness			       		INTERNET: jness@ub.d.umn.edu
Information Services		        	BITNET:  JNESS@UMNDUL
University of Minnesota, Duluth