STARLAN on AT&T 3B2/400 and 386

[Leslie Mikesell]

In article <11791 at cbnews.ATT.COM> mveao at cbnews.ATT.COM (eric.a.olson,54242,wi,1f018,508 374 5626) writes:

>    Now we have two Starlan networks - starlan-10 between a dozen or
>    so 386s and starlan-1 between the 3B2s and 3B1s.  And a Hub unit...
>    and a 10 to 1 bridge...
[....]
>    I finally bridged the two networks and found that the NAUs could
>    see the ones on the other network by address, but not by symbolic name;
>    and cu/uucp of course couldn't find them.
[....]
>    Here is what they said:
>	You must have StarGROUP software 3.1 or better on the 3B2s
>	in order to talk to Starlan-10 from Starlan.  Starlan is
>	ISO(?), while Starlan-10 is OSI.

Not quite.  The old starlan connecting the 3b2's and 3b1's is URP.  You
can upgrade the 3B2 software which will allow it to connect over the
10-1 bridge to your Starlan-10 units.  In case no one has told you
yet, you *can't* upgrade the 3b1 software, but then you didn't have
RFS on the 3b1's anyway.

>    A local information source added that the SVR3.2 upgrade for the
>    /400s and /600s will mean an expensive motherboard upgrade.

Not true.  I'm running 3.2 on some very old /300's and /400s with
no hardware changes.

>    I haven't installed StarGROUP on the 3b2/600 yet as it will 
>    prevent it from talking to the 3b2/400s, some of which are 
>    still running DOS servers and can't yet be upgraded.

You can upgrade everything except the 3B1's and make them all one
big happy family using the OSI versions of RFS and DOS Servers on
all the 386's and 3B2's, and version 3.x of the PC client software.
I wasn't thrilled at having to dump the 3B1 DOS servers either, but
from experience I can say that one 386 DOS server will replace 2
3B1's and give a performance boost as well.

Les Mikesell
 les at chinet.chi.il.us