Archive-name: acorn/networking/faq
Posting-Frequency: monthly
Last-modified: 1998-04-19
URL: http://www.tazenda.demon.co.uk/phil/csan-faq
Maintainer: Phil Blundell
Version: 1.32
This file tries to collect together some of the accumulated wisdom to
do with networking of Acorn computers, in order to reduce the number
of times the same questions are asked in the comp.sys.acorn.networking
newsgroup. Although the traffic in c.s.a.networking is not high, and
the signal-to-noise ratio is normally quite good, there are some
questions that tend to crop up repeatedly, and it gets a little
tedious for the regular readers to answer them every time. Please
read this FAQ before posting.
Despite what the above paragraph might imply, not every question
answered in this document has necessarily been frequently asked. Some
of the information has cropped up on the newsgroup only a few times,
or not at all, but still seemed interesting enough to be worthy of
inclusion.
This FAQ is divided into five parts. If you're not interested in a
section, you can search for '**' to skip to the next one.
I am working on a pretty HTML version of the FAQ. Until this is done,
it's only in plain text, and may not look too great in web browsers.
Also, updates may be sporadic (and the table of contents is missing)
since I have two copies to worry about right now.
This FAQ is posted monthly to comp.sys.acorn.networking and
comp.sys.acorn.announce, as well as news.answers and comp.answers.
** Section A: General stuff **
Q. What's comp.sys.acorn.networking?
A. This group is for discussion related to networking of Acorn machines.
This includes both connecting your own machine to the Internet and
running a local-area network of machines.
Q. Are there any other newsgroups I ought to read?
A. Yes. You might like to check out comp.dcom.lans.ethernet,
comp.dcom.cabling and comp.protocols.tcp-ip for a start. Many of the
people who know Ethernet bridges inside out, for example, don't read
comp.sys.acorn.networking.
If you're having trouble connecting to the Internet that may be
specific to your ISP, look to see if they have local support groups
first.
Of course, the other comp.sys.acorn.* newsgroups are the place to go
for Acorn discussion that isn't necessarily networking-related.
Several of these groups have their own FAQs, and you should check them
out as well.
Q. Is there other good stuff available on the net?
A. Yes. Many vendors have their own web sites; see below.
There is a pile of LAN information, including the FAQ for
comp.dcom.lans.ethernet, at .
Acorn's ftp site has a pile of stuff, including online versions of
their Application Notes (nos 228, 231, 261, 264, 283 & 296 may be of
particular interest) and circuit diagrams for some of their hardware,
including Econet interfaces. This can all be found at
.
Education people might like to look at
as well.
Kevin F. Quinn used to maintain a seperate FAQ containing information
on using Acorn machines for Internet access. This document is quite
old now and has not been maintained for some time. However, it may
still contain useful information. You can get it from
ftp.demon.co.uk:/pub/archimedes/FAQ-Using-Acorns-For-Internet-Access.txt.
Q. This FAQ is awful! Whose fault is it?
A. Phil Blundell put the FAQ together,
and he would appreciate comments and suggestions for improvement.
Many of the answers were provided by the amassed intelligence of
comp.sys.acorn.networking posters, of whom there are too many to list
them all individually. Andrew Gordon provided a lot of the
information in, and checked the technical accuracy of, the Econet
section. George Hawes, Dom Latter and others at i-cubed ltd provided
lots of useful information about Ethernet and AUN.
Q. I'm an educational user. What I really need to make my life of
drudgery more bearable is some sort of guide to Ethernet.
A. You're in luck! i-cubed limited have a document for just such an
eventuality. You can find it on the Web (start from
and follow the links through "Support").
Alternatively, if you need a paper copy, send email to
and ask nicely.
Q. Can I ask people here to help me set up a network?
A. By all means. But remember to take advice you get with a pinch of
salt. Networking can be a complex subject, and you ought to make sure
that the person who advises you knows what they're talking about
(which, sadly, isn't true of all Usenet posters) before you take their
advice too seriously (and particularly before you spend any money).
Q. Who makes or sells Acorn networking equipment?
A. Here is a partial list of suppliers with brief contact details.
Don't construe the inclusion of a company here as a recommendation.
If your company has been left out and feels hurt, send me email.
i-cubed Ltd.
Xemplar Education.
Atomwide Ltd.
ANT Ltd.
Q. What's an `intranet'?
A. Whatever you want it to be. This question gets asked on the
newsgroup an awful lot, and usually provokes uninteresting rants from
a nunber of quarters. If you post this question again, expect a
hostile response.
For those who really want an answer, there are some who believe an
`intranet' is any network on which TCP/IP protocols are used and that
is not part of the global Internet. However, there is an alternative
school of thought that holds that an `intranet' must span many
continents, consist of many thousands of machines, and be owned by at
least five major world powers, and that anything less is merely a LAN
with aspirations. And thirdly there are those who feel the word is a
vile piece of marketing-speak and that anybody accused of uttering it
should be shot on sight.
** Section B: TCP/IP and Ethernet **
Q. What's IEEE 802.3?
A. It's the standard document that defines Ethernet. If you want the
last word on what is and is not allowed by the specification then this
is the place to look. You can buy a copy from your local IEEE agent -
in the UK this is BSI. It's quite expensive, but worth it if you do a
lot of work with Ethernet.
Q. I want to run TCP/IP on my machine. What do I need?
A. Before anything else, you need a "protocol stack". There are two
options here, Acorn's own Internet suite and Tom Hughes' FreeNet.
These days there probably isn't very much to choose between the two;
FreeNet has more features, but more people seem to use the Acorn
version.
Some useful URLs are:
. (Acorn TCP/IP)
(FreeNet)
Once you've got the stack, you need a hardware driver for whatever
interface you want to use. This might be an Ethernet card, or it
might be a serial line (with or without a modem) or it might be
something even more strange. If you're lucky, your card will have one
in ROM (look for a module with a name like "Ether1" for an Ethernet
card). If not, you may be able to find one on the net, or you may
have to talk to your vendor. Then you should read the rest of the
questions in this section.
Q. What's DCI?
A. DCI is the Driver Control Interface, a way for protocol modules
(eg the Internet TCP/IP suite) to talk to the drivers for your
hardware (eg an Ethernet card). DCI-2 was the first widely-released
version, and DCI-3 is to all intents and purposes the same. DCI-4 is
a more recently developed replacement, which provides better
performance and increased functionality. DCI-2 and DCI-4 are not at
all compatible; you must make sure that your protocol stack and your
hardware drivers are trying to use the same version of DCI.
Both FreeNet (from version 2) and Acorn Internet (from version 3) use
DCI-4. DCI-2 is essentially obsolete now.
If you use !BootNet or !Gateway, you need to make sure you are using
the correct version to match the rest of your system - both DCI-2 and
DCI-4 versions exist.
Q. Would it be possible to write a converter to make DCI-2 drivers
work with DCI-4 (or vice versa)?
A. In theory yes. However, this would only be a useful thing to do
if you're stuck with old hardware and no new driver. As far as I know
nobody has actually written such a beast, but post to the newsgroup if
you're desperate and maybe someone will help you out. Probably a
better plan, though, would be to find someone to write a new driver
for your card.
Q. I want to write a network device driver. Where can I get
information on DCI-4?
A. Theoretically, this is freely available from Acorn. In practice,
as with much of Acorn's technical documentation, it can be something
of a challenge to get hold of it. There are two documents you need,
the DCI4 specification itself and the MbufManager programming
details.
To make matters worse, the "official" electronic version of the DCI-4
specification at Acorn now seems to be an Impression document, and the
person who imported it didn't take enough care to stop Impression
chewing up the C structure definitions (it has a habit of eating
anything starting with a '{' character, unless very carefully
restrained). Intact versions of the document do exist, but it may
be even more difficult to get hold of one. Acorn were apparently able
to ship the mangled specification for two years without anybody
complaining.
Q. My Ethernet card has a driver in ROM (or I'm soft-loading one),
but Internet doesn't recognise it!
A. You may be trying to mix DCI-2 and DCI-4. Talk to your vendor to
see if you can get a ROM upgrade or soft-loadable replacement driver.
There are some updated driver modules included with the Internet
distribution on Acorn's ftp site. The "EtherR" card by Risc
Developments needs a new ROM (costing £10) - no soft-loading drivers
are available.
As far as I'm aware, DCI-4 drivers exist for most Ethernet cards that
have been made for Acorn machines. The Atomwide/ANT "Pocket Ethernet"
adapter and all Digital Services cards are DCI-2 only. If you're
using an A4, it looks like you're stuck with DCI-2 for the time being.
The Ether1 driver is apparently only of beta quality, but I haven't
heard of any problems with it other than its apparently incompatibility
with Internet 5.xx.
Q. Do all the machines on my network have to use the same stack?
A. No. The protocols that your hosts talk on the wire is, at least
in theory, completely independent of the network stack, DCI and driver
versions that you're using. If you're installing new machines, it's
probably a good idea to use the same stack on them all as far as
possible to make maintenance easier, but there's no pressing need from
a technical point of view.
Some people have reported problems when DCI-2 and DCI-4 stacks are
mixed on the same network. There doesn't seem to be any evidence to
back this up,
Q. How do I use TCP/IP over my modem (or null-modem link)?
A. You need a SLIP driver. There is one included with FreeNet; it
will work equally well with Acorn Internet.
Q. Can I run TCP/IP over Econet?
A. Yes. You need a module called "EconetA", which provides an "ec0"
interface. A new DCI-4 version of this module has just been released
by Xemplar, and can be obtained from their FTP site. Note that this
module uses a different protocol over the wire to older EconetA
modules and so the two will not interwork, though they can coexist on
a network without interfering.
You can get a free DCI-2 version, including source, from
.
Q. Does that work for Nexus Virtual Econet as well?
A. Yes. NexusVE behaves just like real Econet as far as TCP/IP is
concerned - you need the same EconetA module.
Q. Can I run TCP/IP on a BBC micro?
A. Strangely enough, yes (after a fashion). Phil Blundell has some
software to allow you to use Econet-equipped BBCs as telnet
terminals. If you have a roomfull of old machines and would like to
use them to talk to your Unix hosts, send email to
and ask for a copy.
Q. I have more than one interface in my machine. Can it act as a
gateway, relaying packets from one to the other?
A. Yes, but this is disabled by default. To turn it on, investigate
the *InetGateway command (for DCI-4 versions of Acorn Internet) or the
"ip forwarding" variable in !FreeUser.Files.Config (for FreeNet).
Q. What's AUN? Isn't that the same as TCP/IP?
A. AUN has two distinct meanings. Primarily it is Acorn's networking
strategy (Acorn Universal Networking), and in this sense it covers the
full range of Acorn networking products which will work across
Ethernet networks
A second usage of AUN is to refer to the protocols used to access a
Level 4 file server, and to run a number of other network programs,
across an Ethernet network. In effect, this involves implementing the
protocols written for the older Econet network hardware on an
Ethernet.
While the two uses of AUN is confusing, no other term exists for the
`Econet over Ethernet' protocols and so in practice we are stuck with
AUN. In this second sense, AUN is implemented on top of UDP/IP. Each
machine on an AUN network is, by default, given a non-standard IP
address of the form 1.x.n.s, where n.s are the network and station
numbers respectively. The station number is configured in CMOS RAM,
using the SetStation utility.
If there are no stations on the network running the !Gateway
application then the network number will be 128, and the second byte
of the IP address will be 0, giving a typical IP address of 1.0.128.32
(station 32).
If any stations are running !Gateway then the network number is
configured within !Gateway, and the second byte of the IP address is
determined by the network's position in !Gateway's list of networks (1
for the first entry, 2 for the second, etc). Typical IP addresses
would then be:
1.1.128.32 Station 32 on network 128
1.3.129.36 Station 36 on network 129
Network numbers under AUN must be greater than 128; those between 1
and 127 are reserved for 'real' Econet.
Yes, it's a bit of a shame that Acorn chose to use 1.0.0.0 as the AUN
network number, but IP addresses like this should never go anywhere
near the real Internet anyway.
Q. What about Access/Access+?
A. These are Acorn's Peer to Peer networking products; Access is the
DCI-2 release, while Access+ is the DCI-4 version and has additional
features. They allow computers to share files across an Ethernet
network. Any computer can export any directory, including $, on any
filing system, across the Ethernet network. The exported directory and
its sub-directories will then be available to all other computers
which have Access/Access+ software. Access+ also provides printer
sharing, although a computer with a shared printer must have a local
copy of !Scrap. This normally means it must have its own hard disc,
although it is possible for it to have a RAM disc set up with a copy
of !Scrap.
Access(+) is implemented using UDP/IP as its lower-level protocols; by
default it uses its own non-standard IP addressing scheme, where:
First byte: Always 1
Second byte: Related to the make of the network card;
104 (&68) for i-cubed cards
Third and fourth bytes: Last two bytes of the network card's MAC address.
The netmask used is 255.0.0.0.
It is possible to use Access(+) with AUN/Ethernet networking
(described above), in which case Access(+) uses the IP address set up
by AUN. It is also possible to use Access(+) with 'standard' IP
addressing, in much the same way as described for AUN
networking. (Note that if you are using Access(+) without AUN
networking you run !Internet to set up the required IP address and
netmask but DO NOT need to run !Bootnet.)
When using Access+, the system variable inet$localaddr is set to the
IP address in use, but with the order of the bytes reversed.
The command *FWShow gives information about the set-up of the
Access(+) network, with stations ("Holders") being identified by their
IP addresses. In this output lines marked with a * refer to the local
station.
Q. What's masquerading?
A. Masquerading is a way to allow machines to access (a limited
subset of) Internet services without having to have real IP addresses
assigned to them. You may want to do this both for technical reasons
(if you've only been assigned one IP address, say for a dial-up
account, but you have a whole roomfull of machines you want to be able
to use) or for administrative reasons (you don't want your machines to
be able to have unfettered access to the Internet due to security
concerns).
To use masquerading, you need one firewall machine. This must be able
to talk to the real Internet (so it needs a proper IP address) and to
the client machines that hide behind it, and are typically on a
private Ethernet. Masquerading works by having the firewall rewrite
the headers on datagrams that pass through it from the hidden clients
to the outside world, so they look like they came from the firewall
machine itself. When reply datagrams come back, the firewall
remembers where the original connection comes from, rewrites the
headers again, and forwards them to the appropriate client station.
All this means that masquerading is only good for outgoing
connections. You can't telnet _in_ to a masqueraded machine from the
outside world. This also means that FTP sessions will usually fail
from masqueraded machines - you must select passive mode first.
Q. Can I do masquerading on my RISC OS machine?
A. Yes, if you use the FreeNet stack. Acorn's Internet module has no
support for masquerading.
Q. What's proxying, then?
A. Proxying is the technique of having outgoing requests (eg for web
pages) passed to a 'proxy server', which performs the request on
behalf of the original client and then forwards the results. This can
be useful both if the clients can't be given direct access to the
Internet, and because it allows the proxy server to perform caching
and reduce the external bandwidth needed. FTP, HTTP and gopher are
easy to proxy, given suitable clients. Telnet is virtually impossible
to proxy transparently.
Q. Now I'm confused! It sounds like proxying and masquerading are
pretty much the same.
A. To some extent they do the same thing, yes. The difference is a
bit like that between routing and bridging. Masquerading works at a
low level in the network stack; the datagrams are simply rewritten as
they pass through the gateway. Proxying requires that you talk to a
server, which then talks to the outside world on your behalf.
Q. What Ethernet cards are available?
A. Several have been produced, though I'm not sure which are still
available these days. A partial list is:
Ether1: an Acorn card based on the Intel 82586. Also known as the
AKA25. Has 10base2 and AUI (somewhat spuriously labelled
"10base5") connectors. This card has no real on-board ROM,
so it's no use for diskless operation.
Ether2: another Acorn card. This uses an National Semiconductors
8390 chipset. Full details of the Ether1 and Ether2 cards can
be found in the A500/R200 technical reference manual.
Ether3: an Atomwide card based on a SEEQ chipset, available in both
10baseT and 10base2 versions. Acorn-badged versions of this
were marked AEH54.
EtherB: an ANT card, available in both 10baseT and 10base2 versions.
EtherH: i-cubed's Ethernet card. Equipped with both 10base2 and
10baseT connectors, and available in flavours for standard
Archimedes podules, A3000 mini-podule slots and RiscPC NIC
slots. Acorn-badged versions are marked AEH62 for the AUN
version, and AEH78 for the Access+ version; they use a PROM
for the firmware rather than the flash ROM found on i-cubed's
own cards.
EtherO: Oak's Ethernet card; 10base2 only, uses a Fujitsu chipset.
EtherP: the "Pocket Ethernet" adaptor by Atomwide. It has a BNC
connector and plugs into the parallel port, deriving its power
from the mouse socket.
EtherR: Risc Developments / Beebug cards. Available with 10base2,
10baseT and AUI connectors, for all models of machines.
EtherM: a RiscPC 'ethernet' socket card (ie not a full width podule,
but designed for RiscPC only) by ANT. Otherwise known as a
'Myson' card, equipped with 10baseT(RJ45) and 10base2 connectors.
Driver supposedly has problems with Internet 5, but in reality
appears to work fairly well (EtherM 0.39, 10-Apr-1997).
A variety of other cards exist. If you have a card that is not listed
here, or more information about one that is, please send email to the
FAQ maintainer.
Q. I want to change to 10baseT cabling, but I have a huge investment
in old cards with no RJ45 connectors. Help!
A. If your old cards have AUI connectors (look for a 15-pin D type
socket, which may be labelled "AUI", "10base5", "Transceiver" or
something even weirder) then you can plug in an external transceiver.
These cost around 20ukp, and will let you use a 10baseT network
connection. If the only connector on your card is the BNC for
10base2, then I'm afraid you're out of luck. Media converters do
exist, but you're probably better off either keeping enough 10base2
segments to handle the old cards or replacing them with new ones.
You may find that installing a number of cheap hubs is the way
forward; this will allow you to use small 10base2 segments for your
old machines and connect them to a twisted-pair infrastructure. Be
careful that you don't exceed the Ethernet limitations on repeater
count, however.
Q. I fitted an Ether1 to my machine, but *Podules doesn't show it!
A. The Ether1 has no ROM. This means that *Podules has no way to
identify the card, and it will show up as a blank line (note that a
slot that is actually empty will show 'No installed podule'). Another
effect of this is that the Ether1 driver must always be softloaded,
unlike other cards which usually have the driver in firmware.
Q. I'm trying to use my Ether1 card with Internet 5.xx, but I've come
to a sticky end. Everything seems to be set up correctly but it just
doesn't work.
A. There is a mysterious problem with Ether1 cards and newer versions
of the Internet module, which seems to result in no received frames
ever reaching the protocol stack. As far as I know the only fix is to
go back to an older (4.xx) version of the Internet module. The Ether1
driver has been unsupported for some time so it seems unlikely that a
fix will be forthcoming.
Q. I want to use AUN networking but need to use IP addresses which fit
in with the non-Acorn computers on my site.
A. This is quite straightforward in principle. If you are using the
Acorn Internet stack then you run the !Internet application; this
allows complete freedom of choice of IP address and netmask (but
conversely requires you to understand IP addressing and netmasking).
Having set the required IP address in this way, you run the !Bootnet
application. This replaces the Net module with the NetI module, which
is aware of 'full' IP addressing. The !Bootnet application has to be
configured to map the true IP addresses you are using onto the Acorn
net.station addressing convention.
The problem here is that stations which have run !Internet/!Bootnet
can not communicate with stations which are in the default
configuration. Consequently running !Internet/!Bootnet from a network
server is quite difficult, and means that you will no longer be able
to communicate with that server once the applications have been run.
There are no such problems running !Internet/!Bootnet from a local
disc.
Q. Aren't there any 100Mbps Fast Ethernet cards?
A. No. The expansion bus in current Acorn machines is too slow to
keep up with a 100Mbps card. This doesn't mean that Fast Ethernet
cards would be useless, as you'd still have 100Mbps of bandwidth to
share between your clients, even if no single station could use it
all, but it does reduce the attractiveness a bit. So far, no company
has seemed willing to invest the development effort to build a 100Mbps
card.
Q. Why are Acorn network cards so expensive? I can buy one for my PC
for £20.
A. That's true. Cheap ISA network cards are made in vast quantities,
so they gain advantage from economies of scale, and require fairly
little development effort on the part of the vendor (they use a
standardised chipset optimised for the ISA bus, so no drivers need to
be written and very little board design is needed). Acorn cards enjoy
none of these advantages, and the result is that the cost is higher.
The same is true for some ISA cards as well - the 3Com Etherlink III
(3C509), for example, uses custom components and needs its own
drivers, and costs about the same as a card for an Acorn system.
Q. I want to connect two computers together with 10baseT. Do I need a hub?
A. No. You can connect two (but no more) machines "back to back",
with a special cross-cover cable. Consult the comp.dcom.lans.ethernet
FAQ for details of the wiring.
Q. I'm trying to use 10baseT networking with a "combo" card but it doesn't
seem to work. What could be wrong?
A. Some combo cards, notably the i-cubed Etherlan 600 series, will
only switch to 10baseT mode if they detect a valid signal at the RJ45
connector. This "link good" signal is generated by all hubs and
network cards, but you can run into trouble if you are trying to
connect two auto-sensing cards "back to back" as mentioned above -
neither card will switch to 10baseT mode until it sees a "link good"
signal from the other, and neither will generate "link good" signals
unless they are in 10baseT mode. If you use a hub then this problem
will not occur. The best solution is probably to replace one of the
cards with one that can be manually switched to 10baseT mode (or
indeed a 10baseT-only model) - if this is not possible then you can
use a loopback plug to fool one of the cards at startup.
Q. I'd like to connect two machines using their parallel ports. Is there
a PLIP driver for RISC OS?
A. A few years ago somebody was working on one, but it seems to have sunk
without trace. If anybody knows different, please say so.
** Section : Disk sharing, etc **
Q. I want to use disks and printers that are connected to Unix
machines. Can I do it?
A. Yes, though not for free. You need an NFS client. The full Acorn
TCP/IP suite (which is a commercial product, unlike the stack itself
which is freeware) includes an NFS client, and ANT's OmniClient
software also includes NFS support.
Once you've obtained the necessary client software, you need to make
sure that your Unix machines are running the right servers. You may
need to run "pcnfsd" or something similar in addition to your standard
NFS daemons to allow access from RISC OS machines.
The best way to share printers is currently with NFS. If you don't
have NFS, and don't want to fork out for it just to print
occasionally, there is an lpr client for RISC OS available. This only
works from the command line, and doesn't integrate with !Printers.
Get it at .
Q. Okay, so the Unix people are happy. But I use Windows for
Workgroups and/or Windows 95 and/or Windows NT. Can I do the same
thing?
A. Yes.
Microsoft systems use a protocol called SMB to share files and
printers. This is carried on top of a system known as NetBIOS, which
in turn sits on top of _another_ protocol, which is either TCP/IP or
NetBEUI, the latter being a proprietary Microsoft protocol.
Two SMB clients are currently available for RISC OS, Omniclient and
RMLogon.
Q. Hey! I've got an SMB server for my Unix machine and I'm using it
to share files with my Windows machines. But my RISC OS computers
can't talk to it! What's the deal?
A. Sadly, the SMB system isn't as simple as you might hope. SMB sits
on top of a protocol called NetBIOS, which in turn sits on top of
another protocol. This low-level transport protocol can either be
TCP/IP or NetBEUI, the latter being a proprietary Microsoft protocol.
Windows for Workgroups can only speak NetBEUI, though there is an
upgrade available to add TCP/IP support. Windows 95 and NT can both
speak NetBEUI and TCP/IP equally well.
So far, so good. Unfortunately, because NetBEUI is proprietary, it
_isn't_ supported by the servers you can run on Unix machines.
Normally this isn't a problem, because Windows will use TCP/IP to talk
to the Unix hosts. However, Omniclient I has the opposite problem (it
can _only_ speak NetBEUI) and so it can't communicate with a Unix host
even though they're both running the same sharing system.
Omniclient II supports TCP/IP and so upgrading should solve your
problem. Otherwise, you have to either use NFS to talk to Unix
machines, or find an NT machine to re-export the disks from the Unix
server. Windows 95 won't do here, because irritatingly it seems not
to let you re-export a remote filesystem or printer.
Q. What about Novell? My PCs and Macs are happily talking to my
server - can my RiscPC do the same?
A. Not directly. To produce a Novell client for RISC OS the
protocols would have to be licensed from Novell (at great expense and
under non-disclosure) and nobody has seemed keen to do this. If you
have an NT machine on hand, though, it should be able to talk to the
Novell server and re-export the filesystems with SMB. You may be able
to pull the same trick with a Linux machine and ncpfs as well, though
this may not be so reliable.
Q. Or AppleTalk? Surely there must be _some_ hope for the Mac?
A. Again, RISC OS machines can't talk directly to Macs, and there's
no immediate prospect of them being able to (though apparently
AppleTalk support is planned for a future release of Omniclient).
However, again, there is a partial solution available. If you have a
FreeBSD or Linux server, installing the `netatalk' package will allow
it to talk to the Macs and access AppleTalk drives and printers; it
can then re-export them to the RISC OS world using NFS.
Q. I'm running Acorn Access. Is there any way I can share files over
a serial link? I have SLIP set up, and I can ping one machine from
the other with no problems, but I can't see its disks.
A. Not easily. The problem is that the Freeway module refuses to use
any interface that it thinks isn't "broadcast capable" - and a
point-to-point link, such as a SLIP interface, doesn't fall into this
category.
People have talked of modifying Freeway to remove this restriction,
but as far as I know nobody has actually done so yet. Aside from the
