========== cixnews/information #307, from mat, 1932 chars, Feb 16 14:46 95 ---------- Short term work in progress. There are a number of outstanding issues which we will be dealing with in within the next month. Much of what we are doing comes under the heading of load balancing, we are trying to get the largest number of users we can online at the same time without degrading performance. 1: Making CIX stable. We believe we have done this to a large extent with the new version of CIX which went online yesterday. We are also getting a better solution to the problem of long power outages in the form of UPS equipment. 2: Getting rid of the engaged tones: We will be gradually making more lines available on 0181 390 1255, whilst monitoring the system performance. We don't want to get into the position of having people spending excessive periods of time online for a simple blink as this will just increase the amount of busy signals users get. We will be putting more lines onto 0181 390 9787 in time but before we can do this we need to raise the number of lines connected to this number. 3: Speeding up the mail system: We are working on different ways of handling users mail in and out baskets, we are approaching this from 2 angles. First is in software, we are investigating our mail system as a whole with the option of tuning the way mail is currently handled, or putting in a completely new mail system (without changing the functionality or the presentation) whichever would be the fastest and most scaleable solution. The other angle is in hardware, we will have a disk unit in for testing on evaluation to see if throwing hardware at the problem will work better in the short term, giving us time to design a better way of dealing with mail in the slightly longer term. We may choose to use both these options. We will attempt to keep CIX downtime to a minimum during this period though there will be times when we need to take downtime to change over hardware and some of the software. ========== cixnews/information #308, from ameoladmin, 237 chars, Feb 17 15:48 95 Comments. ---------- Registering Ameol If you wish to register any version of Ameol, please mail cixadmin, please do not mail ameoladmin, or an Ameol moderator, or any member of CIX staff directly, or ameoltech. Thanks Bruce Ure Ameol support manager ========== cixnews/information #309, from ameoladmin, 118 chars, Feb 17 16:19 95 Comment to 308. ---------- Note that you can do this automatically by selecting "Help | Register Ameol..." and filling in the details. Bruce Joining brief/general (F) 20 new message(s). ========== brief/general #861, from warthog, 161 chars, Feb 5 14:24 95 Comments. ---------- Key repeat rate is too fast on a pentium. I've tried changing it in brief setup and in DOS but nothing slows it down! Does anyone know a fix for this? Leo ========== brief/general #862, from cody, 264 chars, Feb 5 15:03 95 Comment to 861. Comments. More refs to 861. ---------- Buy an 8086 machine? :-) I didn't think this was anything to do with the processor but was set in the BIOS at so many timer ticks (1/18ths of a second). Is there an option in your BIOS setup? Are you using a keyboard driver where this might be adjusted? Jon. ========== brief/general #863, from warthog, 420 chars, Feb 5 18:07 95 Comment to 862. Comments. ---------- I've messed about with the BIOS settings but Brief doesn't appear to use the bios other than for the initial key delay. The repeat rate is selected in the setup program and worked fine on my old DX266 but on my new P90 the setting is being ignored and is resulting in a ridiculous repeat speed. This also happens on another P90 at work so I reckon brief's got a problem with the pentium. Any other ideas? Leo ========== brief/general #864, from cody, 471 chars, Feb 5 19:10 95 Comment to 863. More refs to 863. ---------- I take it that setting the keyboard repeat to "off" in setup does just that, rather than letting the BIOS setting take effect? Haven't tried it myself. Suggesting a com file using INT 16 to set the keyboard repeat wouldn't be much use either if that's the case. Is this the Underware version of Brief we're talking about or the Borland mess up? If it's the latter, they may have a work around. If it's the former, then I'm afraid it sounds like you're stuffed. Jon. ========== brief/general #866, from warren, 100 chars, Feb 6 18:01 95 Comment to 863. Comments. ---------- Looks like Brief has a problem with the Pentium here too. Cursor moves like the wind! :-) Warren ========== brief/general #869, from warthog, 194 chars, Feb 9 00:05 95 Comment to 866. Comments. ---------- Well, I've found a half solution. As the problem only realy affects the cursor keys I've written some macros to perform the cursor movements followed by a short delay. It works!! :-) Leo ========== brief/general #870, from cody, 159 chars, Feb 9 02:33 95 Comment to 869. More refs to 869. ---------- Congratulations. Doncha just love that editor? :-) How about uploading the macros so's we can all benefit when we finally get _our_ Pentium machines? Jon. ========== brief/general #871, from warren, 73 chars, Feb 9 10:08 95 Comment to 869. ---------- What a damn fine idea. I'll do the same here right now. Cheers, Warren ========== brief/general #865, from jritman, 183 chars, Feb 6 09:26 95 Comment to 861. Comments. More refs to 861. ---------- I haven't tried on later versions of Brief but on mine you can set the delay & repeat rates by shelling to Dos, it seems Brief does not reset them when exiting the Dos shell. Jon ========== brief/general #867, from daljit, 142 chars, Feb 8 12:07 95 Comment to 861. Comments. More refs to 861. ---------- Try using something like NCC from norton utilties or any other proggy to set the typematic rate outside of the brief enviroment. -Daljit ========== brief/general #868, from cody, 97 chars, Feb 8 12:35 95 Comment to 867. More refs to 867. ---------- It's already been pointed out that Brief doesn't use the DOS settings. Hence the problem. Jon. ========== brief/general #880, from wookie, 36 chars, Feb 18 23:59 95 Comment to 867. ---------- That'll be handy under OS/2 !! J/. ========== brief/general #872, from bfd, 143 chars, Feb 13 20:02 95 Comment to 861. Comments. ---------- I changed to 50 lines/screen and that slowed it down enough to be workable for me, I've only goy a cranky old DX4 100Mhz jonnie tho :) Martin. ========== brief/general #873, from bfd, 406 chars, Feb 13 20:04 95 Comments. ---------- TITLE: Brief V2.1 I've been using Brief V2.1 for ages now with no problems but now I've just tried to install it on my new Lapttop a Twinhead Sl550 and it just hangs when i try to run brief. Sometimes I get a border around the screen and sometimes just hangs at the Dos prompt. I've tried all combinations of flags that I could think of, clean boot etc but still no go. Anyone got any ideas ? Martin. ========== brief/general #874, from warren, 119 chars, Feb 15 13:00 95 Comment to 873. ---------- Try setting an environment variable 'BEMS' to 0, i.e. put 'SET BEMS=0' (that's a zero) in your autoexec.bat. Warren Joining cixug/general 2 new message(s). ========== cixug/general #263, from cam, 162 chars, Feb 1 12:38 95 Comment to 248. Comments. ---------- >We will be having other access points around the country If I wanted to 'Watch this space', where would be the best place to hang out for news of this? (here?) ========== cixug/general #264, from home, 109 chars, Feb 2 07:41 95 Comment to 263. ---------- You need to be in cixip/announce which is where we will hear next of what is going on and hopefully soon. Joining network/discussion 18 new message(s). ========== network/discussion #126, from ppadmore, 17 chars, Dec 19 22:00 94 Comment to 125. More refs to 125. ---------- you have mail... ========== network/discussion #127, from dellison, 4189 chars, Dec 19 22:04 94 Comment to 125. Comments. ---------- Long message > Long answer >1. Am I mad, should I tell them to hire an expert - if I can find one? No, do it yourself. 10 users is a good size to start with. All experts have to begin somewhere and I'm sure you'll find that you are more familiar with their requirements than an outsider. You'll learn lots and enjoy yourself (er, on the whole that is). It helps if you've got a good relationship with your dealer who can help you avoid some basic errors and answer all the questions here. >1. Novell 3.1 (3.11?) or Windows NT 3.5 - which is best/easiest Novell. 3.12 is the latest version. Very solid. Few surprises and easy to get help/support/books for. The de facto industry standard? There is also version 4.x but I doubt if you need the aggro or the features. >2. Can client machines share access to a CD-ROM located on the server? Yes. The best way is to use a thingy called a DiskPort (£700?) to attach your CD RoM drive to the server. Many Compaq servers these days come with an internal CD ROM drive which speeds up software loading as you don't have to swap diskettes. I understand it can be shared around the network but I haven't done this myself as we use the DiskPort with a multiple disk CD drive. >3. Can you share access to a fax/modem and route incoming faxes. Yes. There are several network fax packages worth looking at: Delrina Winfax Pro seems to be the most commonly used. A simple solution might be to buy the whole shebang: modem and software for Windows, in a package called FaxNow! from Iconographic Systems which I recently read about in a mag. It gives you everything you need to do what you describe. Their phone no is 0908 222255. >4. Can Client A see Client B's drives with Netware/NT? No. Best avoided. >5. Is centralised data storage the best bet or should I leave the data > on client machines and pull it across the network for backup? Store the data on a central server with a big disk which is up to the job rather than on users' PCs. You never know where anything is if you encourage them to keep things on their PCs. Another thing is that backing up from individual users PCs takes longer and requires more expensive software. Also data is more secure from prying eyes locked away on a server. Use disk mirroring on the server if your budget will stretch to it. Use a DAT tape drive for fast backups. Sometime software comes with them (Mountain, Maynard, Irwin) or you might have to get your own with eg: Hewlett Packard. Try ArcServe - very good and lets you back up users PCs quite easily. >6. Roughly how big should my server be (piece of string I know)? Taking into account your £10k budget, you might look at a 486DX2/66 server with 24 or 32Mb RAM and 1 Gigabyte disk. If you can afford it buy two disks and mirror them. Make sure you get a fast 32 bit network card for your server. Probably Compaq or IBM is out of your client's price range but don't go too far down market: it is the road to misery in the long run. Dell are good. >7. What can I do to future proof the design? Buy everything bigger and faster than common sense dictates. For instance a Gigabyte might seem over-generous for 10 users but you will outgrow it sooner than you think. Get a server which has room for more disks and memory. A lot depends on what the business will do in the next two or three years. For the size of network you want it might be better to get a second hand ethernet or token ring mau which may be old technology but at least you can throw it away when the business expands or when you've got more money to invest in structured cabling etc. >8. Who invented liquid soap and why? (plaudits to anyone who can identify > the movie that came from)? You've stumped me there, I'm afraid. Books? There's one called Networking Windows by Que which I thought was good but I can't tell you any more about it because I lent it out and never got it back. Aside from that, there are any number of books in big bookshops which explain networking for all levels of expertise. You might have enough to read however once you get the Novell manuals. Now let's see what everybody else has to say... David ========== network/discussion #128, from dbuckley, 210 chars, Dec 20 18:25 94 Comment to 127. More refs to 127. ---------- gee, you saved me a load of typing. I'd concur with all of that. mail ccomley, and ask him to price up a suitable server with DAT backup, and you'll also get the benefits of grillions of cix-rows experience. ========== network/discussion #129, from customisedinfo, 206 chars, Dec 20 18:57 94 Comment to 127. Comments. More refs to 127. ---------- Route incoming faxes I didn't know this was possible with current standards. How's it acheived ? Presumably the sender has to be in the know or is all recieved by the receptionist and forwarded ? Robert ========== network/discussion #130, from dellison, 74 chars, Dec 20 21:13 94 Comment to 129. Comments. More refs to 129. ---------- Somebody has to forward the faxes in any solution I've ever heard about. ========== network/discussion #133, from pr, 403 chars, Dec 21 18:39 94 Comment to 130. ---------- I've seen systems which OCR the incoming fax and attempt to send it to the right person (has the big disadvantage that "dear personnel manager, I'm about to sack Bloggs" gets sent to Bloggs!). There are also snazzy DDI-type systems where effectively you have a range of numbers which all ring the same fax "machine" - the exchange passes the number to the fax, which uses it to onward route. -pR ========== network/discussion #132, from dbuckley, 288 chars, Dec 21 18:23 94 Comment to 129. Comments. ---------- I know of 2 schemes that both work reliably: 1) use DDI to a bank of fax numbers (say 50), forwarding onto (say 10) fax lines of a suitably clever fax system. 2) Supply barcode stickers to your sendee's, who affix them to each fax before sending. Incoming faxes are routed by barcode. ========== network/discussion #136, from dellison, 190 chars, Dec 22 01:43 94 Comment to 132. Comments. ---------- It occurred to me that something like that might be possible but I've not seen it done. Is it all done within the PBX? Must say I don't fancy the cunning OCR idea much that pr mentioned. ========== network/discussion #139, from dbuckley, 449 chars, Dec 23 18:22 94 Comment to 136. ---------- Not really. For the DDI scheme, the PABX must be capable of sending DTMF routing tones. This is primarily done for voice mail. ie 30 incoming DDI 'lines', 6 POTS lines from PABX to voice mail system, when a divert to VM happens DTMF info is sent down the POTS line to say what number was originally dialled, so the VM system plays the right greeting. The fax system must be capable of accepting and processing incoming DTMF info. most won't be. ========== network/discussion #131, from robbiee, 1577 chars, Dec 21 02:01 94 Comment to 127. Comments. ---------- How much extra aggro is version 4.0 ? As far as my researches tell me version 4.0 has built in support for CD-ROM (a key requirement), well worth the extra 200 quid for a ten user pack if it will save me 700 quid on that Diskport thingy. Although further complicating (maybe simplifying) this picture, someone told me today that if the CD-ROM is hanging off a SCSI controller then sharing access to it under 3.12 is no problem. Anyone know if this is so? Having said that some of the extra 'features' of version 4.0 look fairly groovy, especially the directory services, the disk compression stuff and the on-line documentation. If my client's going to get a better system then I don't mind extra grief provided I can get the thing to work properly, and I don't mind if some of my time is non-chargeable - after all these are good skills to acquire. What I don't need is a mass grief not getting the thing to work and giving my client conniptions. Whatever I do I'm on a learning curve. The big question is: how much steeper is the v4.0 over the v3.12 curve ? Also, does anyone know why typically a 5 user pack of Netware is way less than 50% of the 10 user pack price ? Can I read into this the sinister possibility that if my client outgrows her 10 user pack I can't just turf another 5 user pack into the pot, but instead have to go out and buy a 25 user pack. Another line, same movie, bit later on, for all you tip of the tonguers out there. 'I'm a good looking guy, you're a good looking guy, we're all three good looking guys.' TIA Ian. ========== network/discussion #134, from pr, 1230 chars, Dec 21 18:39 94 Comment to 131. Comments. ---------- V4 is quite a bit more hassle than 3. It doesn't really gain you a huge amount, either. You can share CD-ROMs with either 3.12 or 4, so there's nothing in it there. The difference between a solution like DiskPort and a shared CD-ROM on the server is that with DiskPort you can lock the server in a cupboard somewhere, and people can still get at the server. With Novell's CD-ROM support, the CD-ROM drive must be physically attached to the server, and you have to use server console commands to mount a new CD. Novell's stuff is OK, but you'll probably "outgrow" it - its not very quick and not very friendly. There are third-party CD-ROM sharing software solutions - SCSI Express is very widely used, but I've never tried it. The directory services look pretty, but on a LAN with one server and ten users, they just make admin harder. Compression is nice, but with disk at 400 quid a gigabyte, hardly earth-shaking. Documentation is on-line for any NetWare version. You can't "add up" NetWare licences - if you have 11 users, you must have a 25-user copy of the software :-(. You can upgrade, say, a 10-user copy to a 25-user one, but it costs quite a bit. Sorry, the quotes have baffled me totally :-) -pR ========== network/discussion #135, from robbiee, 279 chars, Dec 21 22:04 94 Comment to 134. More refs to 134. ---------- Thanks all. I'll stick with v3.12 then. The film in question starred two baby faced actors who have gone one to make it fairly big: Anthony Edwards, last seen starring in Northern Exposure, and John Cusack, last seen all over the place in Hollywood sub-blockbusters. Ian ========== network/discussion #137, from dellison, 2128 chars, Dec 22 01:43 94 Comment to 134. Comments. ---------- I agree with all of that. The networks that I'm responsible for connect several hundred users in six different countries with Netware,Unix, AS400, HP and Mainframe hosts. Yet there is still no _really_ good reason to move to Netware v4. 3.12 works terribly well and it's easy to find people to maintain it. If we do upgrade it will probably be to make administration a bit easier and because it looks nice on the CV (to be perfectly frank). A salutory tale: A few years ago when Microsoft were touting LAN Manager as the NOS of the future and saying that Netware had had its day, the company I worked for were persuaded into buying it from a large dealer who wanted the experience of 'the next big thing'. What a time we had! At the time LANMan couldn't share printers properly, much less modems. It was hard to find out how to make various bits of software work with it, eg: Lotus 123! If ever we reported a problem to any software helpdesk, they always pointed the finger at the NOS because it was an unknown quantity to them. The server became diskbound for no good reason until we discovered that hardware cacheing was practically de rigueur for LANMan (with Novell you can just throw more memory at it). I could go on. I doubt if choosing Netware 4 could be as bad as that but it's worth remembering that an awful lot of people can show you where the bears in the woods lurk with v3.12 whereas v4 is not nearly so widespread yet. It's true that we were the first kid on the block with the latest NOS. These days however I much prefer to be the _second_ kid on the block with any new technology. Incidentally, it's not really relevant but, a well known data recovery company told me that the top three reasons for people using their services to recover data from corrupt tapes or disks were: a) whenever Novell bring out a new version and b) people not having tested their backups before actually needing them and c) disk head crashes ...in that order I didn't mean to go into a luddite rant against anything new but I reckon for your purposes 3.12 will be just fine and dandy. Cheers David ========== network/discussion #138, from robbiee, 164 chars, Dec 23 03:27 94 Comment to 137. Comments. ---------- OK, OK, Netware 3.12 it is. I still have a lot of questions though. Watch this space. Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your toes. Ian ========== network/discussion #140, from pr, 121 chars, Dec 24 19:50 94 Comment to 138. ---------- > I still have a lot of questions though. Watch this space. If you aren't there already, j netwire/nware_3 et al. -pR ========== network/discussion #141, from mfletchera, 1242 chars, Jan 4 15:44 95 ---------- TITLE: Windows/Unix Client Server Integration. Help Please !!! As a gradual process of moving our COBOL - Unix based product to Client Server architecture we are looking at how to add WIN front ends to existing $'lroutines. For example we have a routine which starts a UNIX based spreadsheet. We woul xlike to drop the UNIX spreadsheet and staot excell on a workstation. i.e. there is no NFS so we need to move the file to the workstation, start excell, detect excell closing copy the file back to the unix server and return the focus back to the terminal emulator. Any ideas ? We have to avoid using any non standard software trying to do as much as possible with Windows & TCP/ip. (The windows side of things ca n be as complicated as required providing it is Visual Basic). The current suggestion is a "listner" on the workstation which detects the arrival of a file (via FTP), when the file starts Excell is started by the listner. At the moment we havent worked out how to detect that the file has been closed by excell and it is therfore safe to close excell and transfer back to Unix. We cant be the first people to do this so someone must be able to give me a few pointers. Share the benefit of your experience ? Thanks Mark