PC-Interface, have you used it?

[James Logan]

In article <LARRY.89Oct17173045 at focsys.UUCP> larry at focsys.UUCP
(Larry Williamson) writes:

# Interactive markets a product called PC-Interface. It works in
# conjuction with a ms-dos package called DOS Bridge. This package
# "provides a transparent integration of the DOS and Unix systems".
# 
# Has anyone used this package?
#
# It sounds like it provides all the features of NFS and rlogin rolled
# into one package. Is this true?

Yes.  I used it back in '85.  Very nice package back then, it
must have improved quite a bit in the past 4 years.  It allowed a
DOS user to connect to a server daemon on one or more UNIX host. 
Each host was assigned its own virtual drive under DOS.

On the UNIX side, the server that was forked by the daemon would
change to your home directory initially, so you wouldn't start
writing all over the root partition.  All regular DOS commands
worked as usual.  It came with a few DOS commands that imitated
"ls" and "chmod" too.  

The only thing it was lacking at the time was the ability to
run a UNIX command from DOS.  Maybe they have added that, I don't
know.  It would have been nice to have been able to use a
command, like "unix" that ran its arguments as a command. 

Commands like:  

	C:\> unix mailx

would have been useful.  I don't think it would have been that
difficult to implement.

It does work over the serial line as well.  You get a DOS
terminal window so you can dial up the host and login as usual,
then you invoke an executable, hit a function key on the PC, and
you're connected as you would be using TCP/IP, although much
slower.

			-Jim
-- 
James Logan                       UUCP: uunet!inpnms!logan
Data General Telecommunications   Inet: logan%inpnms at uunet.uu.net
(301) 590-3069