Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!ncar!gatech!dcatla!mclek
From: mclek@dcatla.UUCP (Larry E. Kollar)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Amiga networking puzzle
Message-ID: <19593@dcatla.UUCP>
Date: 5 Jun 89 18:21:29 GMT
References: <88G002rZ2c1g01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> <8198@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> <9658@super.ORG> <19518@dcatla.UUCP> <372@xdos.UUCP>
Reply-To: mclek@sunb.UUCP (Larry E. Kollar)
Distribution: na
Organization: DCA Inc., Alpharetta, GA
Lines: 53

>> = myself

In article <372@xdos.UUCP> doug@xdos.UUCP (Doug Merritt) writes:
>
>[...] Installing ***ANYTHING*** on an IBM PC
>is a real pain, and always involves all of the above steps, including
>*some* kind of cabling problem.

OK, granted.  I presume (no experience) that installing Amiga cards includes
some, but not all, of those problems as well (does autoconfig eliminate
jumper settings? asking out of ignorance).
>
>>Now, you do something called "tuning"
>>the network.
>
>Hmmm...we never went through that step here, where we've got dozens
>of multi-vendor Unix boxes plus Eye Be Em's on our thin ethernet. What's
>that all about?

All about me shooting off my mouth, is all. :-)  Sorry about that.  Tuning
is something I've only *heard* about from our LAN experts here; it apparantly
gets important when your Ethernet connections get into the hundreds.  I
believe it involves impedance matching.

Of course, AppleTalk starts choking at 32 devices, unless you invoke a
little black magic (Farallon StarControllers or equivalent) of your own to
get around it.  Helps a LOT on networks with >50 devices....
>
>>Now, how do you connect your PostScript printer to it?  It has to be
>>attached to someone's computer, borrowing CPU cycles to serve everyone else 
>
>Yeah; ours is hooked to my workstation. Print spooling barely blips my
>performance meter; it inconveniences me not at all.

On a Unix box (or an Amiga), I wouldn't expect much impact.  Typing before
thinking, I assumed a network of PC/Macs without "real" multitasking.  It
also depends on whether you have a bunch of writers trying to cram 30+ pages
each through the printer all at once. :-)
>
>>[...]  I was happy to see the announcement for an Amiga AppleTalk
>>card; it'll get more Amigas into the art departments of the world (see? we
>
>Hmmm. I missed that. By who, how much, which Amiga models are supported?

See article <1513@percival.UUCP>, by William Coldwell of CMI.  You probably
saw it just after you posted your response. (Murphy strikes again. :-)

>At work we can't afford to use anything slower than ethernet, though.

Think of AppleTalk as "LAN Lite."  Hooks up great, less throughput. :-)
-- 
Larry Kollar	...!gatech!dcatla!mclek
If potatoes aren't computers, why are there potato chips and potato bugs?