Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!steinmetz!armstrong!hallett
From: hallett@armstrong.steinmetz (Jeff A. Hallett)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Network!?  What's that?
Message-ID: <11753@steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 5 Aug 88 16:04:17 GMT
References: <46700045@uxf.cso.uiuc.edu> <625@eplrx7.UUCP>
Sender: news@steinmetz.ge.com
Reply-To: hallett@armstrong.steinmetz.ge.com (Jeff A. Hallett)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 32

In article <625@eplrx7.UUCP> lad@eplrx7.UUCP (Lawrence A. Deleski) writes:
>From article <46700045@uxf.cso.uiuc.edu>, by msf1537@uxf.cso.uiuc.edu:
>> What is the best way to connect one hard drive to two Macs?
>> 
>[stuff deleted]
>
>One way around this is using PhoneNet with TOPS.  The first Mac would be
>connectd to the SCSI disk in the usual way.  The second Mac would connect to
>the first Mac using a pair of PN connectors.  After booting the first Mac
>and Publishing the HD with TOPS,  the second Mac could boot from a TOPS
>startup floppy and mount the SCSI disk.  

The only problem with this is that everytime the second Mac accesses
the mounted drive, the first Mac pauses.  This is a function of the
"single-user" mode of Macintosh hardware.  If you plan on having this
drive mounted on several Macintoshes, you're better off dedicating a
Mac and a drive and using AppleShare because the net effect will be
the same - the mounted Macintosh will be unusable.

We ran across this the hard way.  Now, we have TOPS on a net with >6
Macs on it, linked to several zones via Kinetics pathboxes with one
Mac serving an 80Meg AST.  The published Mac is password protected so
only our group can mount it, but the speed degradation is quite
noticable.

Jeffrey A. Hallett                     | ARPA: hallett@ge-crd.arpa   
Software Technology Program    	       | UUCP: desdemona!hallett@steinmetz.uucp
GE Corporate Research and Development  | (518) 387-5654
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