TCP/IP and Token Ring

[Bill Diamond]

I've been busily installing several new software packages recently received
from ISC, to wit: the TCP/IP, NFS and X software.

X was somewhat difficult to get installed, however, I believe the problems
have been resolved.  Much to my pleasure, the manuals provided by ISC have
been tremendously useful in getting things going.

I would like to get TCP/IP and NFS running between my systems. So far I've
tried out the Excelan and 3COM 3C503 cards.  The Excelan card doesn't
support 2.0.2, and the 3Com proved to be totally unreliable in our
configurations (Compaq 386/25 and 386/33 with SunRiver fiber optic
workstations).  I was recently contacted by an engineer from ISC, who
recently implemented a similar configuration and advised me to look at the
Western Digital 8003E card, which I plan to do.

This still leaves me a problem.  We are also introducing a token ring based
LAN in house in the next few weeks; I would like to bridge the UNIX and LAN
systems, but if I use ethernet I'll need a bridge between the two types of
networks.  At present, ISC doesn't support token ring.  Does anyone have
any information which could justify my waiting for the much-rumoured
January upgrade?  I don't mind waiting an extra few weeks for the software
if it means I can be all-token ring in house.

Also, many thanks to those of you who responded to my previous posting
about VP/ix.  Quite a few of you had tremendously helpful insights as to
what the actual nature of the problems are, and saved me much grief and
frustration.  Thanks especially to the responses from ISC's engineers who
jumped into the fray.
.