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From: korn@eris.BERKELEY.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: VAX <--> Mac
Message-ID: <2140@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Fri, 9-Jan-87 04:28:16 EST
Article-I.D.: jade.2140
Posted: Fri Jan  9 04:28:16 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 9-Jan-87 21:39:55 EST
References: <523@lsrhs.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@jade.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: korn@eris.BERKELEY.EDU ()
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 37
Keywords: VAX, Ultrix, Mac, AppleTalk

In article <523@lsrhs.UUCP> schmidt@lsrhs.UUCP (chris schmidt) writes:
>I am managing a VAX 11/780 and will be acquiring 10+ Mac plusses inside the
>first half of this year.  I need to find a way to hook the VAX to AppleTalk
>(or another network) so that the Macs can share it's disk system and general
>beefiness.  Obviously, I don't want to have to resort to terminal emulation
>since that will decapitate the macs.  I've heard rumors that Apple is
>working on a product designed to do just this, but I don't know if such a
>thing will work with Ultrix (or SysV) which we currently run.  I want no
>part of VMS, but something tells me that Apple will try to work with that
>system first.  Any suggestions?

I would go with Tops by Centram.  I spent a fair portion of today at
the MacWorld Expo playing with their stuff, and I came away quite 
impressed.  The UNIX end was talking with a uVaxII running 4.3BSD Unix
(the Mt. Xinu folks were there making sure that someone there could
bring up and down the Unix end).  I ran Excel and a couple of other
programs from the uVax hard drive--ran about the same speed as the 400K
floppys.  The interface to the uVax end is a Knetics box.  I didn't
get too many details of the hardware, sorry.

Tops will allow you to transfer files to & from macs & Unix boxes (and PCs--
why this latter I couldn't tell you, but...), and to mount Unix file
systems as MFS or HFS drives on the mac (I tested both).  I didn't get
a chance to see if I could make a mac drive behave as a Unix file system,
but I believe that you can do that too.  Currently they are not set up
to handle spooling to the LW well.  In fact, nobody there was very
clear on spooling, save that "yah, it's a neat thing, and it'd be useful,
and hey look, the PC end spools".

Still, the product seemed very very robust (our office currently has
Tops installed over a mac, a PC, and a LW).

Peter
-----						  
Peter "Arrgh" Korn		         Hacker?  Me?  A hacker?  No, actually
korn@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU			 I'm a mac-er.  All's we do is
{decvax,dual,hplabs,sdcsvax,ulysses}!ucbvax!korn            make library calls.