SUN4 <=> Mac connectivity EXPERIENCE ????

[Klaus tenHagen A]

We need help from guys having real experience in the sun4-mac connection.

Our situation: 

We have a couple of sparcstations from sun connected by a thick ethernet.
This ethernet serves as an institute backbone. Our APOLLO tokenring is
also coupled to this ethernet by a DN3000 working as a gateway between the
APOLLO tokenring with AEGIS networking software and the ethernet, which
mainly transfers TCP/IP-packets.

All the peripheral equipment, such as the postscript laser printer, are
attached to the sparcstations and can be shared by every machine using the
nice remote printing facility of BSD. We installed nfs on all machines
(sparc, APOLLO) hence we can access our data files from all hosts.

Future plannings:

Currently we are using the text processing system T3 on MSDOS (forgive me
to mention the sign of the hell in this group). Nevertheless MSDOS has
convinced us that it's not the platform to get the real work with the best
efficiency done. We must have a desktop publishing system which gives us
the possibility to integrate graphics and mathematic expressions. Hence we
come to Mac. We want to use MacSEs and MacIIs.  MacSEs since they are much
cheaper, have no noisy fan and need only a small part of our limited
desktop area.

The problem:

How to share the resources allocated on the ethernet by the Macs!

For the physical connection we think the best is to connect the MacSEs by
localTalk, since this saves the expansion slot, and to connect the MacIIs
directly to the ethernet. One MacII must then operate as a gateway.

But what's about the higher protocol levels?

The solution we know is TOPS of SUN. TOPS is installed on every Mac
whereas nothing has to be installed on the sparcs. Thus the TOPS must
emulate TCP/IP to connect the sparcs and use nfs to get the files from the
sparcs (or APOLLOs). It is said that TOPS is be able to support a
distribute file server. How to get the rights on my files in my MacSE?
What's if I use a file on my MacSE and someone remote wants to use this
file? Is the MacOS prepared for such situations? (UNIX is as we all know.)

TOPS must also be able to communicate with the BSD lpd(aemon), because the
TOPS information we have, promise to be able to share printers.  TOPS is
also compatible with all LocalTalk network bridges, hence we should have
no problem selecting the software for the MacII working as a gateway
between LocalTalk and ethernet.

Software information is like what lovers said in a warm summer night with
the bright moon shining...

Is there anybody out there with real experience???

We have also information about a package called EtherShare which makes a
MacII to a gateway between the localTalk and the ethernet. If this
software really works then we have the closing brick in our solution.
Nevertheless there are suspicions since how can you start a routed(aemon)
on a MacII? Is there real multitasking as in UNIX? If TOPS uses TCP/IP
then the gateway must route TCP/IP-packages. These packages are received
by the localTalk interface and must be send to the ethernet and vice
versa.

If this is not feasible, we must purchase a special gateway like the
GatorBox. What is in this mythical box that can not be done by a MacII?

A lot of questions we know....  If you can help send an email to us, we
will report our conclusion and post our experience with the arising
solution.

Thanks in advance.