networking under SimulTask (long)

Sun Dec 17 09:12:50 AEST 1989

In article <1315 at uwm.edu> chad at csd4.csd.uwm.edu (D. Chadwick Gibbons) writes:
>
>	I had recently loaded SimulTask, version 2.0, I believe,
>onto my AT&T System V 3.2 386.  It appears to work well enough,
>but my attempts to use an existing LAN in DOS mode did not work,
>as I assumed.  I believe it would be possible to take advantage of
>the network since the ability to use tcp/ip with the same hardware
>exists.  However, I assume my problems are because of the nonexistance
>of a device driver for the network communication board, which
>happens to be a standard microsystems ARCNet communications board,
>attached to a Novell NetWare SFT 2.15 file server.  I've contacted
>sms about doing something along these lines, and they say it is
>possible, although I was given little more information.  Has anyone
>ever attempted to use a networking facility under SimulTask, and
>have had any success?

I believe someone else tried to set this up through a DDA
device (Direct Device Access) and got it to work but gots lots
of corrupted packets (like 50% of the packets were corrupted).

There are a few other (albeit limited) options; I believe HP and
Novell have announced a port of Netware to Unix Sys V Rel.
4.0.  Presumably it will become available when HP gets their
port of 4.0 done which should be sometime next year.  I'm
pretty sure it was HP; it might have been another large OEM.
Presumably since it will run on Unix Sys V 4.0 it will run on
most (if not all) vendor's implementations of 4.0.

In addition,  If you are running StarGROUP software over
StarLAN networking cards, there is an item known as the
"Simultask NETBIOS Client Interface Program."  It provides
an Installable Emulation Module (IEM) that will allow the
normal, MSDOS-based StarGROUP client driver to talk to
the Unix-based StarGROUP driver so that you can talk
to NETBIOS networks over the StarLAN card.  Over the
same card, you can be running the MSDOS server, RFS, CU, etc.

There is a limitation though; it only supports up to 8 clients
running at once maximum, and most of those would have to be
over console virtual terminals.  For directly attached
terminals, we only recommend that you have two people at a
time running Simultask with the NETBIOS program running (ie,
two people on terminals and one on the console).  You can
really feel it performance wise when it's running too; we had
it set up on a 6386/25 (25 Mhz 386 platform) with about 6 or 8
users coming into the machine - performance was pretty bad.
But if you stick to the guideline of 2 terminals plus the
console, it works okay.

>From the client program, you can connect to any StarGROUP
server on your network.  For instance, from a console virtual
terminal I can sysadmin an MSDOS server in the next room.

It also provides file and record locking to Simultask
applications if you've been looking for that.  Presumably, you'd
have to link to an MSDOS server to share the disk areas, but
it could be made available to Simultask users through the
NETBIOS program.

Pre-requisites -
	o  1 or 10 Mb StarLAN card
	o  Starlan Network Program (Unix device driver for the card)
	o  Simultask
	o  MSDOS 3.2 or 3.3 (no official support of MSDOS 4.0)
	o  Simultask NETBIOS Client Interface Program
	o  StarGROUP Unix-based or MSDOS-based Server Program

The only thing you need the MSDOS Server Program for is for
the client software installation diskettes.  You don't need to
actually install the Server Software.  But if I were setting
up the system, for flexibility I'd install a Unix-based MSDOS
Server too.

For those that don't understand the distinction between
StarLAN and StarGROUP, StarLAN refers to the hardware portion
of the product, and StarGROUP refers to the software products
that run over the hardware.

But the StarLAN/GROUP products probably don't help you since
you mentioned NetWare.  You can only run the StarGROUP product with
StarGROUP protocols.

Hope this gives you a few ideas,

-- 
Frank McGee, AT&T
Tier 3 Complementary Channel Sales Support
attmail!fmcgee