Re: AppleTalk

[dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

bill malcolm <wm65805@alltel.net> wrote:

> The Term is call Responder  --- which the IIe/IIGS lacks --

Huh?  The term "responder" has never been used to describe an AppleShare
file server, as far as I am aware.  (Certainly not "call responder".)
It can be used as a general term for a piece of software which waits for
incoming network connections and responds to them, and this is a
reasonable description of how an AppleShare server operates.

> Reason is 65816 has got too much to do the hand that also.

Not at all.  It is just that no-one ever wrote an AppleShare server for
the IIgs, as it would be a lot of work for little gain, when you can get
an old Mac for a song and use its file sharing facilities (or run an old
copy of AppleShare on it).

As far as performance is concerned: the IIgs has similar performance to
a Mac Plus (as long as you aren't doing heavy processing of numbers
larger than 16 bits), and a Mac Plus is perfectly capable of running
AppleShare 2.0 (which takes over the whole machine).  AppleShare 3.0
might not run, due to lack of memory, but System 7's file sharing would
be available on a Mac Plus.

There are other technical issues which would make it difficult for an
Apple II to act as an AppleShare server, e.g. it would probably be
necessary to use HFS as the server volume in order to comply with the
AppleShare virtual file system.  ProDOS doesn't have enough flexibility,
particularly in its file name restrictions.  (This could be resolved by
using a private data file which mains the extra information to map
between the AppleShare virtual file system and the real ProDOS file
system.)

-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz