Path: utzoo!mnetor!perle!!edhnic!utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ames!pacbell!hoptoad!tim
From: tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: NFS for the Mac
Message-ID: <5483@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: 29 Sep 88 19:45:34 GMT
References: <669@ksuvax1.cis.ksu.edu> <5459@hoptoad.uucp> <6007@pwcs.StPaul.GOV>
Reply-To: tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney)
Organization: Eclectic Software, San Francisco
Lines: 33

In article <6007@pwcs.StPaul.GOV> dennisg@pwcs.StPaul.GOV (Dennis Grittner)
writes:
>Cayman with their Gatorbox nay have the NFS answer once they get
>the software a little more robust.
>The construct they are using is mapping NFS to Appleshare.

Not a bad idea, though the protocol differences are enormous and that is likely
to keep the mapping slightly buggy for a long time.  The real problem is not
with AFP, which is a fine protocol, but with Appleshare, Apple's implementation
of AFP.  You can't make your Mac a server.  This would exclude about 90% of
the things I've used TOPS for.  Client-only file servers are silly, especially
on Appletalk.

Unfortunately, after some months of using TOPS on a development Mac II, I had
to come to the conclusion that TOPS is not really a background server.  When
someone would download the new version of my program, the mouse started
jumping; somebody was sitting at the interrupt level too long.  Mac TOPS
does very little in interrupts, deferring all scheduling until the synchronous
level by a trade secret mechanism; so I think the problem is really in Apple's
ATP implementation.  But a jumpy server is still a lot better than no server.

>I think ( again ) that they are darned close and they
>are working on solving the problems.

I'm sure they are; the test is whether they usually break one thing in the
course of fixing another.  Like I said, there are major protocol differences,
and the thing must be a programmer's nightmare unless they have a really
solid model of execution.  If you have any further information on the mapping,
please share it....
-- 
Tim Maroney, Consultant, Eclectic Software, sun!hoptoad!tim
"Conversion, fastidious Goddess, loves blood better than brick, and feasts
 most subtly on the human will." - Virginia Woolf, "Mrs. Dalloway"