Newsgroups: comp.sys.att
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!maytag!xenitec!iguana!merce
From: merce@iguana.uucp (Jim Mercer)
Subject: Re: 6300 networking
Message-ID: <1991Feb10.224913.27654@iguana.uucp>
Organization: Ed (the iguana) Memorial Society
References: <1991Feb3.035942.23719@usenet.ins.cwru.edu> <1991Feb7.024608.12819@iguana.uucp> <1991Feb08.201424.29672@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: Sun, 10 Feb 91 22:49:13 GMT

In article <1991Feb08.201424.29672@chinet.chi.il.us> les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) writes:
>In article <1991Feb7.024608.12819@iguana.uucp> merce@iguana.uucp (Jim Mercer) writes:
>>we have a classroom full of single floppy 6300's which used to connect to a
>>3B2 using starlan 1 NIC's and starlan software.
>
>>we dropped a starlan 1 NIC into a Novell server, plugged it into the hub,
>>rebooted the 6300's with a novell style boot disk and whamo, instant novell
>>network.
>
>Did you gain something from this as compared to the netbios/3B2 server in
>the way of software compatibility, extra functionality, speed, or size of
>the client code?  Did you compare Novell to the '386 version of the unix
>starlan server?

the main reason for the switch over was financial.

our main unix system was a Perkin Elmer 3220 V7 beast.

we needed to replace it with something.

we had a 3B2/500 in the classroom basically as a dedicated DOS file server.

it was cheaper to replace the 3b2 with a generic 386 based novell server
than to purchase a new machine with sufficient power for our unix needs.

we noticed a large increase in performance (sorry, i didn't do any benchmarks)
we noticed that our applications were loading faster, much faster.

also, we had a fair amount of system hangs, although this is probably
related to the fact that we were running an older version of Starlan software.
i think the current AT&T stuff is stargroup.

also, most network aware software recognizes Novell (explicitly in
documentation), whereas you had to guess when using starlan.

i wish i could have file links back though.  8^)

-- 
[ Jim Mercer   work: jim@lsuc.on.ca  home: merce@iguana.uucp  +1 519 570-3467 ]
[     "I am pro-military.  I am not pro-war.  There is a big difference"      ]
[                             -- Louise Mandrell (Toronto Sun)                ]