Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!samsung!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!emory!utkcs2!mars!abg
From: abg@mars.ornl.gov (Alex Bangs -- bangsal@ornl.gov)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os9
Subject: Re: Network options for os/9
Message-ID: <1991May16.114206.6477@cs.utk.edu>
Date: 16 May 91 11:42:06 GMT
References: <1991May16.003019.25620@unhd.unh.edu>
Sender: usenet@cs.utk.edu (USENET News Poster)
Reply-To: abg@mars.epm.ornl.gov (Alex Bangs -- bangsal@ornl.gov)
Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab
Lines: 40

In article <1991May16.003019.25620@unhd.unh.edu> pss610@unhd.unh.edu (Paul S Secinaro) writes:
>I don't know much about os/9, so could someone tell me what kind of
>networking packages exist for the system?

The two basic packages Microware has are the Ethernet Support Package
(ESP) for CMC Ethernet boards. They also have a more generic Internet
Support Package which assumes that the Ether stuff is handled by
something else (like the on-board Ether on a 147). I don't know much
about the ISP package, but we have numerous copies of ESP.

Call Microware for prices (Microware sells S/W for Motorola systems
directly; for other CPUs, I believe you purchase direct from the CPU
vendor).

>I am especially interested
>in being able to run this machine over Ethernet as an NFS client.

Ha, ha, ha. Good luck. I bought version 1.0 of NFS from Microware a
while ago. Never by version 1.0 of ANYTHING from Microware. Version 1.0
was dead-on-arrival. Didn't work at all. I have since received later
versions that have worked somewhat (could do NFS clients but not
serving; many small problems with NFS client operation). I just received
a more recent version which I will be testing in the near future, and
which (they tell me) is supposed to fix the many small problems.

Note NFS cost is $1000 per box.

>Even
>better would be the ability to, for example, have a setup where you
>could pop up live video windows on other machines on the net, perhaps
>running X11 or something of that nature.  Does this sound reasonable?

Well, Microware sez they are working on X11 for the future. See the
section on NFS for what this means.

Good luck...feel free to respond with questions.

Alex L. Bangs ---> bangsal@ornl.gov         Of course, my opinions are
Oak Ridge National Laboratory/CESAR            my own darned business...
Autonomous Robotic Systems Group