Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!caip!sri-spam!parcvax!hplabs!pyramid!decwrl!amdcad!amdimage!prls!philabs!aecom!naftoli From: naftoli@aecom.UUCP (Robert N. Berlinger) Newsgroups: net.micro.mac Subject: Tops for the PC and Mac (Long) Message-ID: <453@aecom.UUCP> Date: Fri, 29-Aug-86 12:04:28 EDT Article-I.D.: aecom.453 Posted: Fri Aug 29 12:04:28 1986 Date-Received: Sun, 31-Aug-86 20:45:33 EDT Distribution: net Organization: Albert Einstein College of Medicine Lines: 90 We recently received TOPS in the mail and I am rather disappointed. To me, networking software should be transparent, simple, and most important of all, robust. TOPS just isn't tops! Actually, the Mac version is much nicer than the DOS version (do tell!). You install a DA, some drivers, and an INIT using an installation program that they furnish. Reboot your Macs, and voila, you are up and running. You can mount volumes as Read Only, One Writer Only, or Many Writers, and you can have password protection as well. The programs use the simple PUBLISH and MOUNT scheme -- the server publishes whatever disks or individual HFS folders to be available on the network, and the client can then view and mount whatever is published. So far so good. My real problem with it is that it isn't robust. For instance, if the server or client crashes, TOPS doesn't seem to register that, and either thinks it is still talking or just hangs. Also, some very common actions can bring down the server as far as the network is concerned. Since TOPS runs as what Centram calles a "hidden DA", it will stop functioning if you go into the minifinder! Although this is mentioned in the manual, I think this is a rediculous restriction. Copying files on the server brings clients to a grinding halt, and formatting any floppy (although you get a warning) will kill off any clients you have. Although the following problems aren't really Centrams fault, they are issues that have to be dealt with in terms of networks in general. 1. The Finder was never meant to be used with multiple users per disk. Problems like trashing desktop files (happens often since there is only one for all those simultaneous users!), files put in the trash showing until empty trash is executed, etc. make life difficult. 2. Copy protected programs don't like to run over the network. In fact, at least one which I tried (Fontographer with its heavy protection, damn them) crashed the client system altogether. 3. Lots of programs don't like to run from write protected volumes because they need to create temp files. In addition, a lot of these programs create temp files that don't have unique names, so they crash if two people use them at once from the same folder. Now on to the PC end. Although TOPS is supposed make the differences between OSs seem transparent, it doesn't do a very good job of it. It does a pretty good job with handling the file naming issue (DOS is 8.3 with no blanks, Mac is 31 with blanks, etc.). However, a simple thing like being able to make a copy of a mac application residing on the IBM from the IBM doesn't work. This is because Centram split up the data and resource forks into two separate DOS files, with the resource fork being hidden (making them contiguous would make more sense to me but there must have been some good reason not to do that). So you can't copy any file that has a resource fork properly. On the DOS version, when you go to publish a volume, it runs a program called XSYNC. I'm not exactly sure why they need to run it, but it seems to do a tree find from the directory you are publishing on down. Publishing a 20 Meg hard disk with lots of file took between 5 and 10 minutes. THIS IS REDICULOUS! We tried their simple example of creating a lotus spreadsheet and then reading it in with Excel. The IBM crashed as soon as we tried to access the spreadsheet from the Mac. (We subsequently got this to work, who knows why.) Great. When using the IBM as a client to a server Mac, you get full hierarchical access to HFS volumes. When you try to do this in the opposite direction, you only get an MFS volume. Why? Who knows, it doesn't say why in the manual. Aside from all these problems, it generally doesn't do much! It doesn't have an email application, it doesn't have a "chat" mode, and no spooler either. Compared to some of the DOS compatible networks I've heard about, I'd say this is a serious lack of functionality. As you can tell, I'm not satisfied. I don't see any reason why it can't be good -- it just needs more work. If Centram keeps at it, it may evolve into something useful. At this point, I'd be scared to share data with it. -- Robert Berlinger Systems Analyst Albert Einstein College of Medicine UUCP: ...{philabs,cucard,pegasus,ihnp4,rocky2}!aecom!naftoli Compuserve: 73047,741