At 20:07 Uhr 19.07.1996, Michael L. Kornegay wrote:

>Has anyone ported netatalk to NetBSD for use over EtherTalk?

As of netatalk 1.3.3, there are patches for freebsd that will go into
version 1.4 (when it comes out). I don't know, though, if this helps much
for NetBSD. IMHO, the cleanest approach would be to implement netatalk as
LKM (like the version for SunOS) -- but I know about as much about *BSD
networking guts as about appletalk's: next to nothing :).

>If netatalk on other machines supports localtalk (I dont know), does
>it support Apples IP in Appletalk tunneling?

Localtalk is a horse of a different colour. It is a Cheap-O-Solution for
minimal hardware expenses. You have to cope with a synchronous data stream
of 230 kbit/s on a serial port with a three byte fifo; this leaves not much
time to do anything else while you're on the net.

In the IIfx, the Quadra AV machines and (maybe) in some of the newer Power
Macs Apple built in neat little 6502 sub-systems for expensive IO tasks
like serial and floppy access that take load off the main CPU. A sensible
thing to do with respect to a multitasking environment, but they 'forgot'
to document this hardware.

On the everyday 680[34]0 Macs out there, Localtalk as well as floppy access
simply take over the entire CPU while running. You wouldn't want this under
MacBSD...



	hauke

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"It's never straight up and down"     (DEVO)