Re: Lan-Tech Netork of 255 ap2's and Siders etc

["Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com>]

brad wrote:

<snip>

> the manual says it can use hard drives other then siders...so i assume that
> means siders (assuming they have a special lantech chip...eprom?...anyone
> have one of these off a lantech system>?..if so contact me..that is only
> glitch i've found for networking siders...it looks like all siders need a
> special lantech eprom chip ..some confusion by me in the manual if the D2
> sider needs one or not...kinda blank on that one in the manual
>
>
> other hard drives i assume are profiles and standard scsi sasi hd's of the
> era ...i would assume a standard apple scsi card and scsi hd would work

Since the networking software will work with standard disk drives
and controllers, I doubt that any special modification is required
to work with Siders.

The firmware you describe may have been an update to allow, for
example, a bigger DOS partition(s) or whatever, but was almost
certainly not needed to function.

The problem with these proprietary nets is their rank proprietaryness!
The people who marketed them were trying to make money in the school
market, which was legendary for copying software.

Rather than just sell the networking hardware and be satisfied, they
"leased" the software to the schools, requiring them to pay recurring
license fees.

For that scheme to work, they had to make it difficult for someone
to hack around their "out of license" code, leading to your current
circumstances.

-michael

8-voice music synthesizer using NadaNet networking!
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/