Connecting Suns and Macs

[David C. Kovar]

> Our beloved editor is correct. The box is called Fastpath/4 and is put out
> by Kinetics. Then you would need some software, like TOPS (a subsidiary of
> SUN). TOPS also lets your Mac share your SUN's disk space!!

> Chuck Williams

I've spent several years connecting Appletalk networks to other networks.
While I was at Carnegie Mellon we used Kinetics FastPath boxes, and, after
some initial teething problems, they served well. When I started at
Harvard I found we already had a Cayman Gatorbox on order and decided not
to cancel it. Turns out to be one of the better decisions I've made. The
Gatorbox provides all of the functionality of a FastPath running the KIP
gateway software plus it maps AppleTalk into NFS, allowing your Sun to
serve as an AppleShare server for your Macs. In addition, it is much more
friendly when it comes to configurating and diagnostics. If you're
considering FastPath's, take a serious look at a Cayman Gatorbox before
you buy the FastPath. Cayman's number is: (617) 494-9270. I've no
connection with Cayman other than being a very satisfied customer.

Once you have the Ethernet and the Appletalk nets linked with a GatorBox,
I'd suggest using Columbia Appletalk Package to provide various services.
We use CAP to provide all of the printing services for our Suns. We could
also use it to allow the Sun to act as an AppleShare server but the
Gatorbox does a better job of that.

Initially I'd thought of using TOPS for our Sun-Mac connectivity problems.
When I talked to Sun they said that TOPS was not supported for the Sun386i
and they didn't see it happening any time in the near future. If you want
to run TOPS on a 386i, don't hold your breath.

-David Kovar
 Technical Consultant