Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!uwvax!astroatc!nicmad!madnix!jason
From: jason@madnix.UUCP (Jason Blochowiak)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: communicating via appletalk
Keywords: appletalk, bulletin boards, communications
Message-ID: <1122@madnix.UUCP>
Date: 18 Feb 90 23:09:06 GMT
References: <22323@unix.cis.pitt.edu>
Reply-To: jason@madnix.UUCP (Jason Blochowiak)
Organization: ARP Software, Madison, WI
Lines: 62

carlitz@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Robert D. Carlitz) writes:
>I have been working on putting together a telecommunications setup for a
>local elementary school.  We are working with a classroom that has 15 or
>20 Apple II's (ranging from II-e's to II-GS's) with a variety of floppy
>disks and a single Mac with a hard disk.  What I would like to do is run 
>a bulletin board on the Mac and let children log onto the bulletin board 
>from the various Apple II's.  Access to the outside world would be
>achieved via the bulletin board program.  Is this feasible?

	Of course it is! This is the Apple ][ we're talking about (well,
there's only one Mac).

>  Specifically, 
>are there communications programs that can run on the Apple II and use 
>Appletalk rather than a serial port?

	Hmm, not that I know of.

>  And, for that matter, are there 
>bulletin board programs that accept logins from machines on Appletalk?  

	Another one - not that I know of. There are, of course, mail programs
for the Mac (if my gleanings from comp.protocols.appletalk have properly set
in my mind, QuickMail seems to be folks' favorite), but that's a bit
different than than a BBS.

>Documentation of Appletalk for the II-GS's is so sketchy as to give no
>hint of what possibilities exist beyond simple print and file servers.

	I dunno, I thought _Inside AppleTalk_ did a fairly decent job. There's
some other documentation specifically for the //gs, but I can't recall the
name at the moment.

	Anyways, although I'm not aware of anything like what you're looking
for, it's certainly possible. But, because it doesn't exist, you'll either
have to 1) Do without, 2) Wait for someone to write it (if anyone ever does)
or 3) Go custom. #3 could be quite expensive, depending on who you hire.

	One other thing: As I understand it, //e's have to have a card stuck
in them for AppleTalk access. Given that there ARE multi-port BBS'es for the
Mac, you might want to consider buying serial cards & cables for the //'s
(well, only cables for the //gs'es), and getting a multi-serial port card
for the Mac. Unfortunately, I'm only aware of multi-port cards for the Mac ][,
and those only have (a max of) 4 ports. With a Mac ][ (or ][x), you could
get up to 20 ports (1 slot for the video card, 5 slots with 4 ports/slot).

	Depending on what sort of required access time you're talking about
(will all 15-20 machines need to be used at once, or would only having a few
students access the thing at a time be acceptable?), you could get away with
a significantly cheaper solution (I think the Mac ][x with that many cards would
be somewhere in the $8000, retail, price range).

>Bob Carlitz	carlitz@unix.cis.pitt.edu	(Internet)
>		pitt!unix.cis.pitt.edu		(uucp)

p.s. I thought of sending this thing as mail, but decided that there could
very well be folks who could comment on what I've said.

-- 
                      Jason Blochowiak - jason@madnix.UUCP
or, try:         astroatc!nicmad!madnix!jason@spool.cs.wisc.edu
       "Education, like neurosis, begins at home." - Milton R. Saperstein