Connecting a Sun to an Appletalk

[Bruce Samuelson]

The solution given below is not much cheaper than buying a second, bottom
end PostScript printer, but does offer some connectivity advantages.

For hardware, we bought a FastPath gateway from Kinetics, Inc., a division
of Excelan.  It connects Ethernet running TCP/IP and UDP/IP to LocalTalk
running AppleTalk.  You should be able to buy it for around $2000,
university pricing.  It works fine, and we haven't had any problems with
it.  You might want to request that Kinetics include a Macintosh diskette
with public domain software from the U of Illinois called NCSA Telnet.  It
enables you to FTP files between a Mac and a Sun and also enables you to
use a Mac as a terminal to the Suns.  It comes with VT 100 emulation, and
you can have several VT 100 windows open on the Mac simultaneously.
Kinetics, Inc., 2540 Camino Diablo, Walnut Creek, CA, 415-947-0998.

For an AppleTalk-aware print spooler, we originally bought K-Spool from
the same company for $495.  Although the company claims it works, it never
did on our Sun.  We replaced it with TOPS for the Sun, which should cost
you around $700-800 educational price.  It includes the TOPS networking
software for the Sun and support for spooling print jobs over Ethernet,
through the gateway, and to a LaserWriter which is connected as a node on
the LocalTalk network.  The TOPS networking software is very similar to
NFS, and in fact Sun plans to merge it with NFS in a year or so.  TOPS
provides convenient file sharing between DOS, Mac, and Sun nodes.  Ask
your Sun salesman for details about it (Sun has acquired the company that
makes TOPS).  You'll have to pay extra to set up Macs or DOS machines as
TOPS nodes, although you don't need to do so to solve your print spooling
problem.