32by32 - Macintosh History from the 1980s

Macworld Expo 1988 San Francisco

Trade Show

Dates: January 15-17 1988
Cost: $15 Exhibits
Exhibitors: 350
Attendees: 45,000

Keynote

Day 1: John Sculley (Chairman & CEO, Apple): The Journey Continues

In his keynote speech, Sculley stressed Apple’s commitment to networking and connectivity advancements, and introduced the zippy Laserwriter II family, with up to 8 pages per minute of printing power.

Day 2 – Gary Tooker (SEVP & COO, Motorola): At the Core of Apple
Day 2 – Jean-Louis Gassée (SVP R&D, Apple): How Can We Keep Japan Inc. From Eating Our Sushi?

In that speech, delivered at last January’s Macworld Expo,
Gassee maintained that the unwieldy nature of the Japanese language prevents
that nation’s programmers from developing their own operating system.
Moreover, open standards like DOS and UNIX have helped the Japanese in their
assault on world markets.

Day 3 – Alan C. Kay (Fellow, Apple): Predicting The Future By Inventing It

Themes

• Programs re-written to take advantage of the Mac II’s color screen
• NuBus cards emerge as a new market

The arrival of a slew of Mac II boards ushered in a new age of color desktop publishing and desktop video production.

• HyperCard stacks as a software commodity

Quotes

The Macintosh emerged as a legitimate corporate computer at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco, but i hasn’t forgotten its roots.

Apple Product Introductions

Apple subsidiary Claris demonstrated the programs it inherited from the mothership, including MacPaint 2.0, MacDraw, MacProject and MacWrite.

Word Processing

Desktop Publishing

Spreadsheets

WingZ, a legendary spreadsheet application, was introduced by Smart Software. Matching Excel’s $400 price, WingZ aimed to deliver next-generation features, such as 3D graphing as well as word-processing and database features. Although reaching back as far as the Mac 512K, it was one of many apps at Macworld this year that fully exploited the new color capabilities and larger screen of the Mac II.

Graphics

Adobe introduced a color version of Illustrator (Illustrator 88) and also gave the first public demonstration of Display PostScript. (The latter technology, of course, would never find a home on the Mac, ending up instead as the display layer of NextStep.)

Claris’ MacPaint 2.0 also demonstrated color capabilities.

Silicon Beach Software introduced Digital Darkroom for $200. A mix of object-oriented and pixel-based tools, it was designed primarily with greyscale (not color) editing in mind.

Aldus was showing off the color capabilities of PageMaker 3 and Freehand.

PixelPaint, mentioned below in the NuBus section, was one of the few color-enabled software packages actually shipping at the time of the Expo.

Peripherals: NuBus Video Boards

SuperMac introduced their 24-bit NuBus video card, the Spectrum•24. RasterOps and SuperMac had been early leaders in the so-called “True Color” market, temporarily eclipsing the previous king of external video, Radius. The Spectrum•24 set you back $3,000, but included a copy of PixelPaint in the bargain. RasterOps’ Colorboard would be marketed both by that company as well as Jasmine, a large hard drive vendor in those days.

The subtlety of shading that can be done with that many colors exceeds the eye’s ability differentiate among hues. The 24-bit boards from SuperMac and RasterOps generated enthusiasm from everyone passing by their booths.

Productivity

Games

An actor dressed up as a ‘dumple’ from Crystal Quest walked the aisles to promote Casady & Greene’s game.

Utilities

Attendees noted PowerSTation and DiskTop as good Finder replacements.

Pyro! garnered a lot of notice as one of the first graphical screen savers. I remember this showing up on university computers around the same time.

Suitcase and Font/DA Juggler were popular Font/DA Mover replacements.

Peripherals

DataDesk was selling their Extended Keyboard for ADB systems, featuring 15 function keys. I remember using one of these on a professor’s Mac SE at UC Berkeley — it had a lot of extra keys, and was I think cheaper than Apple’s Extended Keyboard, but also had a real PC Clone feel.

Networking

User Groups

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BMUG Meeting minutes 1/14/88

Acta document

BMUG Meeting minutes 1/14/88

Announcements

Visiting MUG Reps

Australia

Japan

various domestic locations

Venezuela

MacWorld Expo news

BMUG party tomorrow night, 7 PM, Green Room, Veteran’s Hall on Van Ness (at McAllister), San Francisco (behind City Hall).

The Newsletter is out! Pick yours up today. Thanks to Carolyn Sagami, the ed-in-chief, and all the authors, illustrators, and volunteers.

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BMUG Meeting minutes 1/7/88

Acta document

BMUG Meeting minutes 1/7/88

Announcements

“Buy your memory upgrades now, they’re only going to get more expensive.”

Wanted: an accountant who uses the Mac?

A: Call Margaret at MacOrchard – she has someone’s business card

A: Karl Edwards 893-8400 if you can help.

Kinko’s wants help. 643-7459, 848-2068.

Wanted: programmer to control heavy machinery through the serial port. Call the office for info.

Wanted: ImageWriter I (person leaving the country shortly). Call the office for info.

Wanted: People with experience writing custom programs in compiled languages also familiar with scientific instrument control. 2 weeks of programming or part-time permanent position. Talk to Linda for info.

Q: FileMaker+: MIN() function?

A: LightGate, makers of Felix device, looking for programmer to do DA development for device control. 596-2350, ask for Mike.

FullWrite Professional: WILL be FOR SALE at MacWorld Expo. Going to shrinkwrap next week. The CEO of the company let the beta testers talk a few days ago. incredible reviews, bugs are few, they know they gotta ship by expo. They HAVE fixed the MultiFinder problems between December 29 and January 4. They had very few paid testers for a long time, and increased their beta force only recently. They’ve told Apple it will be shipping two days before Expo.

If you buy it now, your first upgrade will be free.

Will the clock be there? It repaginates on the fly.

Q: Accelerator card for Mac+?

A: Check at MW Expo next week.

A: Next week, MacWorld Expo in SF, Friday-Sunday (industry day Thursday). all of Moscone Center and then some.

WordPerfect: February 15th?? They’ll have a booth at Expo.

Q: Camera?

A: DA – 1.4. NOT Mac II-compatible.”Screen.2” (on Paris-1 at Expo) does work.

Q: Hierarchical project-oriented outliners?

A: Think-n-Time from Mainstay DA

A: “It’s rather bizarre”

A: Look at MORE.

AT&T committed to purchase 20% of SUN today.

They’re working on parallel projects

Mostly capital infusion.

Similar to IBM investing in Intel years ago.

Includes promise of non-takeover, unless someone else does.

Q: MacWrite 4.6 – won’t full-justify?

A: Do you have returns on every line?

A: Have you tried a fresh copy?

A: Put the same size font in the system to get it to justify properly, EVEN ON THE LASERWRITERâ„¢.

Q: I DO have that in my system…

A:

The Obligatory Printer Question

Q: “Best” quality working well on ImageWriter II with version 2.6 of driver?

A: Works OK on ImageWriter I

A: Various bugs in printing are experienced.

A: On IW I, would not work on “normal” quality for one person.

A: Differing printer drivers should be compatible with various systems.

Q: Printing HyperCard Scripts, running out of paper, it just keeps going…

Q: Word 3.01 gives “draft” option when running with spooler, but prints out regular.

A: Trick in MS-Word, hold down (option?) key to get to the “normal” print dialog boxes, instead of Word’s.

Q: FreeHand?

A: Expo. It is a graphics program from Aldus.

A: Mac Today mentioned Apple announcing better MIDI interface. They now have a Sound evangelist and Sound group.

A: SE fan fixes:

A: (Chuck @ M.A.C.) PeripheralLand device is temperature-sensitive variable-speed soon. $39.95.

A: Go to your dealer, listen to new SE’s – perpendicular-mounted vent blade-type fan. THEY WILL be upgrading old SE’s, for $91!!!!! And NOT FOR A WHILE — JUNE OR JULY!!!!!! Theya re an ordinary 12vDC brushless fan. Puts out more CFM than Apple’s Squirrel-cage fan, $15 at Dick Smith electronics or SeaBreeze from ComputerWare.

A: They now changed to noisier (Quantum) drives from Rodime drives.

A: Get a WalkMan

Q: Why Mac+ vs SE?

A: Mac+ may be discontinued sooner.

A: SE = “Slightly Enhanced”

A: Keyboard, Expansion, SCSI port faster, ROM.

A: Get the SE for two floppies and get an external HD, unless you’re with the University.

A: An External HD is more flexible and portable and indpendent in times of crashes.

A: External (third-parties) usually have 1-yr warranties.

A: Mac Plusses are quieter.

OlduVai announced a converter to allow attachment of DeskTop bus devices (keyboards, etc.) to Mac plusses and the like.

A: There are lots of alternatives to Mac+ keyboards.

MacToday: speculates a machine between SE and II, by summer.

A: Sculley says no new CPU’s this year. However, Jean-Louis Gassée said that last year.

A: “3-piece SE”? 16 MHz? 68020?

Q: Consider integration and market catch-up when buying new word processors. For instance, File formats, etc. The existing word processors may do the simple jobs better.

A: The new PageMaker has a feature “StyleSheets” that you can name and automatically format when importing from ANY text editor.

A: MiniWriter is good. It has Smart Quotes built in. (BMUG DA-1.4)

A: It takes a lot of effort to learn a WP. Why not learn one that’s feature-full?

A: There are limits to that…

A: Make sure that the features you NEED are fully supported.

A: “Buy above your needs”? Consider learning cost, time.

Q: Does anybody use MicroSoft Write?

A: It’s somewhere between MacWrite and WriteNow.

A: Word 3.01 is a very solid program, WriteNow is buggy. (except the equation editor)

A: How can you say that? The vice-versa is true!

A: There are lots of formatting glitches in Word

A: No there aren’t!

A: Some people always have problems

Q: How can you better get WYSIWYG from ImageWriter and on-screen to LaserWriter?

A: While composing your document, use “Chooser” on the Apple menu and choose the LaserWriter, then choose Page Setup. The screen will better show the printer arrangement.

Q: Anyone use MS-Works for WP?

A: Yes.

Q: Cheap Laser printers?

A: Lots of rumors.

A: Don’t buy anything this week.

Q: What’s the fuzzy stuff on the ceiling?

A: It’s not asbestos.

Q: Is it true that Apple is going to remove support for the LaserWriter, as compare to the LaserWriter Plus?

A: Apple people often work on the latest stuff, neglecting the older, more commonly used equipment. Software testing often catches these things, but they don’t know as much as the original developers.

A: Rumor: LW+ AND LW will shortly be discontinued. Makes sense, since Canon no longer makes the insides.

A: There are a # of new LW’s expected. Canon will have their own LaserWriter. PostScript® clones will abound. Technologies like LED’s and the like will be seen. Wait 2 weeks or 6 months.

Q: What are the latest PostScript® clones.

A: Phoenix is committed to making one.

A: Adobe can make rapid changes and obsolete the clones quickly. Adobe fonts may not work.

A: GCC Personal Laser Printer has its own font family emulating the original ones.

A: Adobe charges $150 to license PostScript® per printer. Everyone’s trying to be compatible.

Q: Is anyone taking a CamCorder to Expo?

A: nope.

Q: Any source of triple-size fonts for ImageWriter LQ?

A: A disk comes with the machine.

A: Neshota font on a BMUG disk comes in lots of sizes.

Q: Do Adobe screen fonts make your screen better approximate the LaserWriter?

A: This is versus the “Apple” versions.

A: The DL-able fonts look better than the built-in fonts.

A: They are sold separately.

A: Fonts like “Palatino Italic” is often more accurate than “Palatino” in Italic style.

A: CHECK YOUR PAGINATION when you go to Laser print. USE your own system.

Q: Does Adobe sell at Times-Italic screen font?

A: It exists. If you pay $180 for the Times family from Adobe, you probably get it.

Q: PageMaker remembers Fonts.

A: It’s a FEATURE, not a bug. It will remember all fonts in the System folder when that doc was created. It does have bugs: if you work with many fonts ( > 100), it gets confused. SuitCase and PageMaker don’t co-exist well, although a patch is available to fix that.

Q: 1.6 meg floppy drives?

A: 1.44 megs working with current disks. Sony has had production problems with the big ones. The “ISM” (Integrated Sanders Machine) chip, which can be replaced on the SE and II. (The IWM (Integrated Woz Machine) is socketed).

Q: What’s difference between IBM drives and Mac drives?

A: Different controllers.

Q: ROM upgrades on the Mac II?

A: They’re giving ‘em out to developers IF you’re doing things like 24-bit color.

Q: How do you do it?

A: Almost everything in the industry trade mags about that is wrong. MacTutor is right. The only thing the changes so far will do is allow the slot manager to run in 32-bit mode in bootup, which only affects BIG RAM cards.

Q: Is there a fix for the Mac OS to work with large contiguous RAM cards?

A: Not currently.

Q: Connect Mac to VCR?

A: Aim a camera at it.

A: Get a GenLock card: Beck-Tech or Computer Friends or ProViz or a bunch of folks.

Q: What system do we use here?

A: Hughes projector (big bucks), simple hi-res video out connector.

A: Anything that is decent costs > $20,000.

Q: What about the LCD ones?

A: You put those on overhead projectors. Some of those are getting good – but still have poor contrast.

A: The other projector here is a BarCo, $8500 for the Mac version, and is not as bright. Color, not NTSC.

Q: Any word on new versions of HyperCard?

A: Rumors are soon.

Q: SIMMs $199?

A: It’s a lie.

Q: Anyone gotten any 1 meg chips from APple lately?

A: No.

A: Sizer and Adjacency are desk accessories that work with MacDraw and actually let you set fraction-of-a-pixel sizes and print EXTREMELY accurately on the LaserWriter. Johnson & Johnson, Newton, MA. Rumors are it may be included in a MacDraw upgrade. Now works with Mac II, comes with Installer.

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Cayman GatorBox

“Nothing else currently does this”

This is a story of a very unique networking product, the Cayman GatorBox. A flawed device, to be sure — but also a compelling synthesis of many different file sharing protocols and communication languages, integrated into one small metal box. For just a few thousand 1980’s dollars, Cayman promised to link together Unix workstations on DARPA-class Ethernet with Macintosh computers connected by Apple’s small-scale, friendly AppleTalk cables.

An intelligent gateway

Our journey starts in January 1988. at the Infonetics Desktop Communications Conference. It was at this Anaheim event that Cayman Systems Inc. of Cambridge, Mass. announced GatorBox, an “intelligent LocalTalk-to-Ethemet gateway” that “lets Mac users operate AppleTalk applications on Ethernet”, in the words of company President Ted Stabler. The GatorBox was due to ship in April 1988, at a price “competitive” with other products.

By March, MacWEEK hand nailed down that price: $2,295. The May issue of Macworld was written before that price was publicized, but did contain details about the “network interfaces for LocalTalk network and Ethernet or ThinEthernet”. The first of these was what we call Thick Ethernet today, expressed as a 15-pin AUI connector, while the second was the coaxial cable for 10Base2. Let’s take a look at those interfaces:

By July, MacWEEK hit the presses with both a delayed shipping date for the GatorBox — August — and a much higher price, $3,495. This price might have reflected the addition of promised future software elements, such as SMTP-to-Microsoft Mail, although that add-on wouldn’t ship for years into the future:

Cayman’s gateway software translates Microsoft Mail messages into a format readable by mail programs based on SMTP, or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, the electronic-mail transfer protocol used in TCP/IP networks environments.

Looking past this SMTP vaporware, the value proposition for the GatorBox was always a unique blend of hardware and software features. Unlike the simpler and cheaper FastPath from Shiva, Cayman’s product bridged not only physical layers and protocol stacks but user-facing, “Level 7” application protocols such as AFP and NFS.

The GatorBox from Cayman Systems of Cambridge, Mass., provides a bridge between AFP and NFS systems, allowing the two architectures to connect while retaining transparent file access for all users. Using this approach, a Mac user can access Sun files and vice versa. Apple has traditionally looked to third-part vendors to round out its product offerings, and Cayman has been only too happy to oblige.

Handling these protocols directly at the firmware level could mean much simpler client configuration — rather than install an NFS client on the Mac, and compile CAP for Unix machines, the machines retained their native software experience and all translation took place on the GatorBox. In the words of MacUser, “[GatorBox] transparently connects LocalTalk to Ethernet – no software needs to be installed on any machine.” GatorBox soon found customers in higher education, where mixed networks of Macs and Unix machines were common:

At Harvard University, Cayman’s GatorBoxes are being used by 100 students in the Graduate School of Design for information sharing among Macintoshes and Sun workstations. “The NFS functionality of GatorBox has allowed students to download their homework on either Macs or Suns,” said David Kovar, who is a technical consultant for Harvard’s Office of Information Technology. “That’s especially important here since we already have a lot of Suns and just started using the Macintosh last fall.”

Even the presidents of other networking companies were impressed. Writing in the May 1980 issue of MacUser, Farallon head honcho Reese Jones noted:

While Apple and Sun duke it out over protocols, with the use of a Gator Box from Cayman Systems, you can convert AFP to NFS, and LocalTalk to TCP/IP Ethernet. AFP clients on the AppleTalk side can “see” an NFS server as an AFP server, gaining transparency between machine types, alternate file systems, and network operating systems.

Little wonder that president Stabler called his product “the first intelligent gateway from the Mac to Ethernet” — and capital markets agreed. Cayman raised US$1.8M from venture capital firm Concord Partners in early 1989.

And new markets for Unix-to-Mac connectivity were emerging every day: what MacWEEK described as the “the unveiling of the first Mac-to-NeXT connectivity product” took place at Macworld Expo in San Francisco that month. Stabler’s claim that GatorBox had shipped in conjunction with NeXT’s launch in late 1988 suggests that either the GatorBox had slipped from its promised August shipping date — or that a software revision optimized for NeXT’s implementation of NFS had been released in that same time. Regardless, Cayman “…have the opportunity to be at the forefront of an emerging computing frontier… this is as exciting as the Mac’s development five years ago.” Indeed, integrating NeXT and Mac systems wouldn’t get easier until the release of NeXT’s AppleTalk stack in NeXTStep 3 in late 1992, leaving a substantial window for Cayman to sell into workplaces with both of Jobs’ creations.

1989 also brought changes to the fundamental protocol the GatorBox dealt with: AppleTalk 2.0 promised to break free of the node-number and architectural limits that hindered complex integrations. But in addition, it promised software routing between different network interfaces in the same Mac. A Macintosh II with an Ethernet NuBus card could theoretically perform some of the same tasks as the GatorBox itself. “Before, I had to rely on hardware from Kinetics and Cayman”, said one beta tester. With the complete GatorBox setup still retailing for $3,500, probably more than one customer started considering such an option. But Cayman needn’t have worried — others “do not believe that software bridges can provide the functionality or performance of hardware-based solutions.”

Cayman’s response was ready by June of that year: they would “introduce two new products and restructure another in support of AppleTalk Phase 2.” The modular hardware architecture shown in the photo above allowed the release of the $3,500 GatorBox T, with Token Ring taking the place of the Ethernet module. And $700 GatorCard — actually a rebrand of the Racal Interlan — would add Ethernet to the Macintosh II and SE, offering a single-vendor solution for workplaces introducing higher speeds to their Macintosh networks.

But it was the GatorBox itself that saw the most changes in response to AppleTalk Phase 2 — at least in terms of bundling and marketing. While a short-term maintenance update (at a “nominal charge” ) would upgrade the GatorBox’s AppleTalk routing to Phase II compliance, an “extensive restructuring” of the product would see the higher-level protocol translations broken up into optional modules, or “GatorBox applications”. Each module could be downloaded onto a base GatorBox, adding functionality at the same time it added revenue to Cayman’s bottom line.

The new lineup looked like this:

GatorBox: $2,795, AppleTalk-TCP/IP routing only
GatorShare: $1,995, AFP/NFS, third quarter of 1989
GatorPrint: $595, PAP/LPR, fourth quarter of 1989
GatorMail: $995 for 10 Mac users, SMTP/Microsoft Mail 2.0, February 1990

The cost savings were clear — although so was the eye-watering cost of nearly $5,000 to achieve the functionality previously offered for $3,500. The press generally repeated Cayman’s company line:

Though previously sold as one product, Cayman unbundled the two products to appeal both to users who need basic LocalTalk-to-Ethernet routing and to those who need the full functionality of an NFS (Network File System) gateway.

In the new, “unbundled” world, software add-ons could be announced (and priced) as quickly as Cayman wanted market attention (or additional revenue.) Yet the actual software itself often seemed to lag. If journalists noted that GatorMail was “originally announced in July 1988 and now due sometime in early 1990” , Cayman pushed ahead with GatorMail-M, which was licensed from StarNine and offered support for DOS MS Mail clients in addition to Macs. (Although scribes noted Cayman “has not yet set pricing or a release date for GatorMail-M.”) . Next to be announced was GatorMail-Q, a “QuickMail-to-Unix mail gateway based on StarNine Technologies’ Mail*Link [SMTP] software”. . The two StarNine-licensed products ran on the mail servers, no special firmware needed to be loaded onto the GatorBox itself. They finally reached users in February 1990.

GatorMail is transparent to users, according to Cayman. Incoming messages from Unix machines appear under the QuickMail or Microsoft Mail interface. For outgoing mail, long Unix addresses can be hidden by aliasing, so that only the name or nickname of the Unix recipient appears in the directory.

As 1990 dawned, Cayman seemed to be cresting a wave. The GatorBox was demonstrated at trade shows such as Uniforum and at Apple’s own AppleTalk roadshow seminars . Splashy full-page ads caught readers’ eyes in MacUser and Macworld:

…while MacUser devoted an entire four-page article to the GatorBox . If Vernon Keenan’s Sharing: From Apples to Alligators was critical of Cayman’s documentation, it also suggested that the need to bridge Mac & Unix network protocols was mainstream enough to merit coverage in a consumer magazine.

It’s Keenan’s article, in fact, which raised the first contemporaneous criticism I’ve seen of a weakness in the GatorBox product: the need to load the operating system and configuration at every power-on. This limitation was particularly acute in Cayman’s 1.4.1 software release, which required a LocalTalk-only Mac, or a Unix TFTP server, to start up:

The GatorBox’s essential software. GatorKeeper, is stored in a folder on the administrator Mac and is automatically downloaded when the GatorBox is rebooted; the Mac must be turned on, connected to the GatorBox’s LocalTalk network, and have GatorKeeper running to reboot successfully. A UNIX host can also act as a boot server for the GatorBox. This booting scheme is unfortunate, because it relies on the boot server’s being available at all times. It would be better to have the software download to the GatorBox once and remain there, battery-backed, until the next software upgrade. Shiva’s EtherGate is an excellent example of this type of approach.

There’s no better way to describe this flaw than the pointed critique that Keenan offered way back in 1990. indeed, for retro collectors, the original GatorBox’s dependency on an external server to boot nearly rendered all the devices premature e-waste, until the software was located, archived, and shared.

One of the most useful parts of this MacUser test is the real-world performance numbers — and these numbers belie the idea that a powerful UNIX system would translate into a fast AppleShare file server:

Copying a 2-megabyte file from an AppleShare server on EtherTalk to a Mac client on EtherTalk takes 31.5 seconds. It takes 61.5 seconds to copy the same file from the NeXT NFS server to the EtherTalk Macintosh client. The additional overhead comes from the GatorShare gateway.

This stands in contrast the promise that “With the GatorBox, Macintosh users can turn the [NeXT] cube into a high-performance AppleShare server, according to Cayman officials.” Yet the results weren’t consistent across all interfaces — bizarrely, LocalTalk-only Macs enjoyed a speedup that Ethernet-equipped workstations did not:

“When a Mac on LocalTalk communicates with an NFS server on Ethernet, the story changes… GatorShare’s gateway (not GatorBox’s router runction, as one might expect) is used… Seemingly counterintuitive, routing between LocalTalk and EtherTalk with the GatorBox is slower than GatorShare’s translation of LocalTalk AFP to Ethernet NFS.”

Another criticism Keenan had was the ersatz Finder-esque interface that GatorKeeper used to manage devices. “GatorKeeper’s interface, although iconic, is not very intuitive. It’s also nonstandard; the Trash appears in the window instead of on the desktop.” This is a common critique of those Macintosh interfaces which are inspired by the Finder, going so far as to replicate the design language and logic of an interface that the programmers no doubt assumed the user would be familiar with already. But problems are likely to arise when software looks like something expected — and then behaves differently. HyperCard is the best-known example of this — a world unto itself, despite the shared programmers and designers (Atkinson, Kare) with the Macintosh’s own operating system. I’ll reserve judgement until I get my own GatorBox working, as I’ll need to use this software myself.

Yet for all these flaws, the essential promise of the GatorBox shone through: users could finally link their the Sun or NeXT workstations on Ethernet with the Macintosh computers that were increasingly being used for desktop publishing and other graphical tasks:

Nothing else currently does this, so if you want to get at NFS servers through the familiar AppleShare software interface, GatorShare is the product to buy.

Towards the 1.5 release

Some of the problems Keenan encountered would be fixed by a new 1.5 software release, which included features such as SNMP, tunneling AppleTalk through TCP/IP networks without EtherTalk, and security options such as hiding devices from users in other AppleTalk Zones. The release also supported protocols such as RIP, MacIP and atalkad, which “let administrators route, configure and monitor AppleTalk packets on TCP/IP networks more efficiently.”

GatorShare was also revised to version 1.5, which supported Apple’s DOS AppleShare client (bundled with their ISA LocalTalk cards), and “byte-range locking, which permits the use of multi-user databases across the GatorBox gateway” . (Keenan acknowledged this feature was coming soon during his MacUser evaluation.) Re-mapping of Macintosh characters into NFS-compliant strings was another improvement. And a small INIT could do the job of loading the initial software onto the GatorBox, supplementing the previous requirement to have a copy of the GatorKeeper application running on a Mac.

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