Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu!bw0i+ From: bw0i+@andrew.cmu.edu (Bryan Wu) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st Subject: Networking, ST's and Spectre 128 Message-ID:Date: 22 Sep 88 02:28:09 GMT References: <8809101819.AA23376@duttnph.patroon.nl> Organization: Carnegie Mellon Lines: 35 In-Reply-To: <8809101819.AA23376@duttnph.patroon.nl> Note: I hoped to send this to David Small, but couldn't e-mail to him.. I don't know if it is even possible, but since you are making a new cartridge for the 128k ROMs, will you also be putting in AppleTalk network port in? Perhaps by putting in the Zilog chip onto the cart itself (since the chip can be bought by anyone) you would be able to get networking into the Atari series via AppleTalk. Perhaps making the Zilog chip available to the ST via. cart slot and bypassing the Mac ROMs you could also introduce high speed nets to the ST w/o using the Mac part of the cartridge? .. This way you could put a high speed port on the Spectre 128 cart itself and wouldnt have to use the Atari's hardware ports (as they are supposed to be slow compared to the AppleTalk ports) for networking. One of the big reasons I'm asking this is because I'm at Carnegie Mellon and we have a computer net. called Andrew (as in Andrew Carnegie, MIT had a similar system called Athena I think) which is a campus wide (even in the dorm rooms) file server system. Just last year, they released a handler for the Macintosh that allows you to access the network via the AppleTalk port. (This project is a joint effort between CMU and IBM and recently Apple (using Mac II's as workstations soon)) Now the project is going to start at the University of Michigan (I think) as well and will be trying to get all kinds of computers (not just IBMs and Macs) onto the fileserver. The Andrew project is aimed towards Universities it seems. If you could get the Spectre 128 to work with AppleTalk, then you would offer a "cheap" alternative to buying a $2000+ Mac SE and would get the business of students buying STs at colleges with the Andrew System..if the Andrew system goes over well. In addition, you could get the ST to share printers w/ Macs if necessary, send info between the two and so on.. a great aid to the ST line which has no really good networking to speak of. Having AppleTalk networking capabilities certainly won't hurt the product. eh? Besides, it would be nice to use the laser printers in the clusters from my room.. sigh..